On-chain trading is undergoing a transformation akin to the hole-card camera in poker: from "visible" to "understandable," traders' strategies, positions, and identities are becoming publicly traceable, giving rise to a new market that can be watched and participated in.
Author: @HelloLydia13
Poker went from a game confined to the table to a mature spectator sport, and much of that is owed to a very small device: the hole cam.
It allowed viewers at home to see players' hole cards for the first time.
Poker had already been on television since the 1970s, but for a long time, the game looked incredibly dull.
Viewers could watch a person think, bet, call, or fold, but they had no idea what he was actually holding, and it was hard to truly understand what those actions meant.
A brilliant bluff and a player methodically betting with a strong hand could look almost identical from the outside.
In 1999, the British show Late Night Poker began using hole cams. Later, ESPN brought a similar production approach to the WSOP, the world's largest and most influential poker tournament series.
The WSOP Main Event field grew from 839 players in 2003 to 2,576 in 2004, 5,619 in 2005, and then 8,773 in 2006.
Of course, a single camera could not have created a poker boom on its own.
The hole cam did not change the rules of poker, nor did it suddenly make players better. What it truly changed was what viewers "could see."
For the first time, viewers gained something close to a god's-eye view. Why a player paused, why he bet, why he folded—all of it could be understood in the context of the cards in his hand. Strategy that had once existed mainly in players' heads became something every viewer could read.
This was, in effect, a media revolution for poker.
More than twenty years later, Crypto trading may be undergoing a similar shift.
Trading is starting to become "watchable"
In 2024, onchain trading and Memecoins entered a new phase.
@Pumpfun introduced livestreaming, and for the first time at scale compressed token issuance, content production, price discovery, and speculation into a single attention loop.
From 2025 to 2026, Perp DEXs grew rapidly, and a new wave of onchain traders emerged alongside them. Their PnL, positions, and liquidation records began making headlines.
Some leading trading platforms noticed this shift and began bringing esports-style event production grammar into trading competitions.
At the end of 2025, @Aster_DEX's Human vs AI series turned the real-time PnL of human traders and AI traders into dramatic ranking curves, delivering a series of stunning reversals.
During KBW 2026, Korean trader @jadoodoo_ generated a flood of memes in a live trading competition, giving rise to the "trading with your feet" meme and quickly making her one of the most recognizable traders on X.
During TOKEN2049, @coinbase directly called its live event an "esports-style Perps live trading tournament," and even included trader collectible cards in the event merchandise.
When esports stops being just an analogy and starts becoming a production grammar that trading products actively adopt, I actually think that rather than asking "why is trading becoming like this," the more worthwhile question is:
Why now?
Onchain trading inherently has some "hole cam properties" that traditional finance does not. Entry, position size, leverage, PnL, liquidation—these things can all exist publicly onchain.
In traditional finance, we usually can only see the returns a fund manager discloses, or see someone say on X that he is bullish.
But onchain, while a trade is still happening, we can already see much more of what is inside it.
Still, this is not enough: being visible does not equal being intelligible.
We all know what a highlighter is for. If you highlight every page of a book, you have effectively marked nothing.
Blockchain has a similar problem. It generates enormous amounts of raw data every second. The data is real, but "real" is still far from a story an ordinary person can understand.
From "visible" to "intelligible"
Televised poker was never just about the hole cam. Production also required player names, chip counts, win probabilities, hand history, commentary, and editing.
So I think a seemingly small feature like @fomo's Trade Thesis actually represents a very interesting shift in onchain product design—it allows traders to attach the logic behind their judgment directly to a real trade.
Later, @gmgnai went one step further and put these theses onto the candlestick chart.
Two kinds of information that had long been separate in the Crypto world began to be placed together:
On X, we have a great deal of language (bullish), but a lack of proof.
And onchain, we have a great deal of proof (this address bought), but a lack of language.
When opinions, positions, and identity are placed together, a trade starts to do more than describe the market. It also starts to describe the person behind the trade.
An address gradually becomes a real player. You can see his way of judging, his trading style, and a traceable historical record.
If the chain itself provides the camera, then what this layer of product design does is closer to directing and broadcasting.
The camera solves "visible"; production solves "intelligible."
And onchain may ultimately go further than televised poker.
The hole cam made poker more watchable, but the people sitting in front of the TV were always just viewers.
Onchain trading is breaking that boundary. When you follow a star trader, you can copy his strategy, take the other side of his trades, or directly enter his Vault.
When a viewer can enter the same market and become a participant in it with almost no friction, media structure and market structure begin to truly couple together.
What does this mean for onchain products?
I see at least three directions.
1. "Watchability" itself will become a product capability.
Traditional trading interfaces have always been designed for people who have "already decided to trade." But in the future, they may also have to serve those who are still watching.
This person does not have a position yet. He is just trying to understand: What is happening in the market? Is there anything worth participating in?
2. Whoever can organize raw data well gains the "editor-in-chief power" to determine market headlines.
Onchain public data has never been scarce. What is truly scarce is the ability to effectively organize attention around that data.
Products must make judgments:
Which wallet is worth watching?
Which trade is worth highlighting?
What kind of person counts as smart money?
Which onchain event is worth connecting to a price move?
In this sense, products are becoming that highlighter on the blockchain ledger.
3. Onchain identity will increasingly constitute a trader's reputation.
I do not think it will replace the persona a person builds on X in the short term. At least not now.
@jadoodoo_ herself is a good example. Her personal character and her trading performance actually reinforce each other.
X mainly tells us what a person has said. Onchain history increasingly tells us what this person actually did when real money was at risk.
That difference matters.
Feedback and criticism are welcome, and DMs to @HelloLydia13 are always open.
I also thank my friend @otzgary for offering many valuable opinions on this article.