Produce one trade decision for a player in Paper Clash, a game where players win map tiles with leveraged trades on PaperTrade. The player has chosen to let you make every trading decision. The goal: take the tile K1 (Forest). That needs the trade to close with a net return on margin above +25.9%. If it closes below that the player keeps the PnL but not the tile, so aim to clear the line, and make the player as much as you reasonably can.
Fixed constraints
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Market: "BTC" or "ETH" perpetual (BTC, ETH). Pick the one with the better setup right now.
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Direction: exactly one of "long" or "short".
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Margin: $20 (the player chose it; you don't).
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Leverage: an integer from 50 to 1000 inclusive (the tile's minimum, and PaperTrade's $1,000-$10M position size).
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Take-profit: the price move in your favor, in basis points of price from the actual entry (1 bp = 0.01%), not return on margin. It must clear the line:
50x → bust 195 bp; BTC take-profit ≥ 61.3 bp; ETH take-profit ≥ 62.1 bp
525x → bust 14 bp; BTC take-profit ≥ 7.8 bp; ETH take-profit ≥ 8.2 bp
1000x → bust 5 bp; BTC take-profit ≥ 6 bp; ETH take-profit ≥ 6.3 bp
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Stop-loss: a price move against the position in bp, smaller than the bust distance, or null to hold to liquidation (liquidation is then the stop).
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No time limit: the trade stays open until the take-profit, the stop-loss (or liquidation) or the player closes it, however long that takes. There is no funding, so holding costs nothing.
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The trade opens a few minutes after you answer (it is queued behind your report), so base the exits on moves from the actual entry, not on your quoted mid.
Papertrade execution
Entry and exit fill at the Hyperliquid BBO mid ((best bid + best ask) / 2). There is no funding or fee on notional. Execution happens after the close request, so the final price and net return can change.
Liquidation: the position is liquidated when the mid moves against it by about 10000 / leverage − 5 bp, and the whole margin is lost.
Winning closes are haircut; losses are not. Use this payout calculation, not raw price move × leverage:
- Let b be the favorable price move in bp, u = (b − 0.3) / 9.7. The active curve is off-hours. For 0 < u < 1, holdback in bp = 6.085 × 9.7 × u^2 × (1 − u)^3; otherwise holdback = 0.
- Deduct the 0.2 bp deadband and holdback: m = max(0, b − 0.2 − holdback) / 10000. If m = 0, net return is 0.
- For the chosen market, scale = (1 − baseRate) / (1 + 1/(m × rateMultiplier) + referenceNotional/(1e6 × m × positionMultiplier)). Market parameters: {"BTC":{"baseRate":0.1,"rateMultiplier":15000,"positionMultiplier":814.598,"referenceNotional":100000},"ETH":{"baseRate":0.1,"rateMultiplier":15000,"positionMultiplier":483.979,"referenceNotional":100000}}.
- Net return on margin (%) = m × leverage × 100 × scale × (1 − 0.02 − 0.005). The win fee is 2% and builder fee is 0.5%, both on the scaled gain.
Reference net returns at 100x (scale proportionally for other leverage):
1 bp → BTC +0.110%, ETH +0.082%
3 bp → BTC +0.345%, ETH +0.269%
5 bp → BTC +1.541%, ETH +1.312%
10 bp → BTC +7.207%, ETH +6.724%
20 bp → BTC +15.857%, ETH +15.267%
50 bp → BTC +42.098%, ETH +41.426%
The minimum take-profits above include these deductions and target 0.1 percentage points above the tile's gain before rounding the move up. Aim beyond the minimum to allow for execution price changes. The tile target and payout parameters can also change before settlement. Challenge and AI service fees are paid separately; the tile compares net trading PnL / margin, not return on total upfront spend.
How to decide
The decision is yours. Pull the market data below, and look up anything else that helps (news, scheduled macro events, liquidation levels, other exchanges' flow). Be decisive: always return a trade. Express doubt through confidence, leverage and the exits, not by refusing. Higher leverage multiplies gains but shrinks the survivable adverse move; a stop-loss saves part of the margin but can stop out a trade that would have recovered.
Market data (Hyperliquid public API, no auth)
POST https://api.hyperliquid.xyz/info with Content-Type: application/json. Times are Unix ms. For each of BTC and ETH:
- Candles: {"type":"candleSnapshot","req":{"coin":"BTC","interval":"1m","startTime":,"endTime":}}, and 5m over 6 h, 15m over 24 h. Fields: t, T, o/h/l/c (strings), v, n. Oldest first.
- Context: {"type":"metaAndAssetCtxs"} → [meta, ctxs]; ctxs[index of the coin in meta.universe] has markPx, oraclePx, premium, funding (hourly), openInterest, dayNtlVlm, prevDayPx.
- Book: {"type":"l2Book","coin":"BTC","nSigFigs":5} → levels[0] bids, levels[1] asks ({px, sz, n}, best first). mid = (best bid + best ask) / 2.
Also useful: {"type":"recentTrades","coin":"BTC"}, {"type":"fundingHistory","coin":"BTC","startTime":}.
Useful metrics, in bp of price so they compare with the bust distance and exits: how often recent 1m windows moved the bust distance against a position before the take-profit in its favor; per-candle adverse excursion; realized volatility over 15/30/60 min and whether it is expanding; distance from VWAP and 1m/5m EMAs; momentum agreement across 1m/5m/15m; trade flow and book imbalance near the mid; funding and premium; open interest vs price; the 24 h range; scheduled events in the next hour.
Output
Return ONLY one JSON object, no fences or commentary. Write it to artifacts/answer.json, not just the final reply. Exactly these keys:
{
"market": "BTC" | "ETH",
"direction": "long" | "short",
"leverage": <integer 50-1000>,
"take_profit_bp": <number, favorable price move in bp from entry>,
"stop_loss_bp": <number smaller than bust_distance_bp, or null to hold to liquidation>,
"bust_distance_bp": <number, 10000/leverage - 5>,
"expected_net_return_on_margin_pct": <number, if the take-profit hits>,
"confidence": <number 0.0-1.0>,
"regime": "trending_up" | "trending_down" | "ranging" | "volatile_choppy",
"entry_mid": <number, the live mid you based the trade on>,
"data_time_utc": "<ISO 8601 time you fetched the data>",
"reasoning": "<2-4 plain sentences: the evidence for the market and direction, and why this leverage and these exits fit the volatility and the line to beat>",
"risks": "<1-2 sentences: what would most likely stop it out or liquidate it>"
}
Use JSON numbers (and null for no stop-loss).