Catalyst is built on a simple promise: one rule, one target, no surprises. That only works if the challenge is fair and consistent for everyone. This page covers who's eligible to trade, what conduct isn't allowed, and what happens if something goes wrong.
These rules come from our Terms of Service (Section 7, Prohibited Conduct); this article explains them in plain language. If anything here seems to conflict with the Terms, the Terms control.
Who can trade
You need to meet all of these to participate:
You're at least 18, or the age of majority in your jurisdiction, whichever is higher.
You're trading as an individual, for yourself. Business or entity profiles aren't allowed.
You're not located in or a resident of a restricted or sanctioned jurisdiction. The current list is in the Help Center, and we enforce restrictions by IP address, billing address, and the country you select at signup.
You're not on any applicable sanctions or restricted-party list.
The following people can't hold a profile or trade on Catalyst:
Current and former Catalyst employees, officers, directors, and contractors.
Competitors, unless we've given prior written consent.
For full eligibility details, see Who can participate?
One profile per person
You get one profile, tied to one name, one email, and one phone number. This is enforced across the platform and isn't negotiable. For how profiles, challenges, and accounts relate, see Can I have more than one account?
What's not allowed
Multiple profiles and coordinated trading
Creating or operating more than one profile.
Coordinating trades across multiple profiles, whether they're all yours or you're working with someone else, to gain an unfair advantage or push one profile through.
Trading from shared devices, IP addresses, or network infrastructure in a way that links profiles together.
Holding opposite-side, offsetting, or hedged positions across multiple profiles (sometimes called cross-hedging or correlated hedging).
Letting someone else trade, and automation
Allowing anyone else to access, operate, or trade on your profile, including through remote-access software, profile management arrangements, or signal-execution services, whether or not money is involved.
Using any automated tool to place, manage, or modify trades, including bots, AI agents, scripts, high-speed trading tools, copy-trading or mirror-trading software, and mass data-entry tools. Every trade has to be placed manually, by you.
VPNs and location masking
Using a VPN, VPS, proxy, or any other tool to hide your location or identity is prohibited. That includes using them to get around geographic restrictions, evade a suspension or ban, or abuse promotional codes. This can result in immediate termination and forfeiture.
Exploiting the platform
Taking advantage of any bug, glitch, error, latency, or unintended behavior, whether or not you report it.
Building trading strategies around price-display errors or delayed price updates, or using external or slower data feeds to get an informational edge over the platform's pricing.
Probing or reverse-engineering the platform to find exploitable behavior.
A platform imperfection, like a delayed or incorrect price, doesn't entitle you to trades made at that price.
Prediction-market-specific conduct
Holding offsetting positions that neutralize your exposure, including holding YES and NO on the same market at the same time; holding positions on two or more mutually-exclusive outcomes of the same event (for example, YES on multiple answers to the same question, such as each possible halftime leader or each team to score first); or entering any opposite-side or offsetting position to lock in or neutralize simulated profit.
Exploiting settlement timing or known event outcomes, including timing trades to coincide with a contract settling, or trading on a real-world result after it's publicly known but before the platform's price has caught up.
Wash trading, or padding your trade count with non-substantive or tiny transactions.
Any trading designed to hit the qualifying trade target while avoiding real exposure to price movement.
Circumventing the qualifying trade target, rules, loss limits, or position-size limits. A loss-limit breach is an immediate challenge failure.
A note on multiple positions. Holding several open positions across genuinely different events at the same time is completely fine and expected, that's normal trading. What's not allowed is holding offsetting positions that cancel out your exposure: YES and NO on the same market, or positions across multiple mutually-exclusive outcomes of the same event (a 'complete set,' where one outcome is guaranteed to win and the rest to lose). The line is whether your positions leave you genuinely exposed to price movement, not the number of positions you hold.
Conduct toward our team
Threatening, harassing, or directing abusive, discriminatory, or violent language at Catalyst staff or support will result in immediate termination of access, without warning.
What happens if you violate these policies
If something flags on your profile, it may be placed under review and payout processing may be paused while we look into it. You'll hear from us by email, and we may ask for additional context.
If a violation is confirmed, consequences can include:
Immediate challenge failure and profile termination.
Forfeiture of any pending or future payouts.
A permanent ban from the platform.
Removal of profits or deletion of trades
A policy violation counts as a failure at the moment it happens, not when our systems detect it. Continuing to trade on a technically failed challenge doesn't make those results count.
We can also revoke a payout retroactively if prohibited conduct comes to light after the fact, even after the money has already been determined or paid.
These rules are applied consistently so every trader is evaluated under the same conditions. For more on the review process, see Why is my account under review? If you think your profile was flagged in error, reach out to support with as much detail as you can.