How MEXC Used 827 Kaito Studio Creators to Put Stocks on Crypto’s Radar

MEXC ran a 31-day stock education contest on Kaito Studio. 827 creators submitted 4,051 posts and videos, reached 17M impressions at a $5.88 CPM and lifted daily crypto smart engagement around MEXC 8x.

Key takeaways

• MEXC put $100,000 into a stock education contest on Kaito Katalyst. Between 20 August and 20 September 2026, 827 creators submitted 4,051 posts and videos on X.
• Those submissions reached 17M impressions at a $5.88 CPM.
• Daily crypto smart engagement around MEXC rose 8x against the week before launch.
• MEXC gained exchange mindshare against other exchanges such as Binance, OKX and Bybit, and peaked at #5 within Kaito’s Exchange Mindshare.

The campaign

MEXC is a crypto exchange with more than 40 million users in 170+ markets. Alongside 3,000+ digital assets, it offers stock and index futures, tokenized stocks, RealStocks for owning US shares and ETFs, and pre-IPO products, with zero fees on key stock products.

In August 2026, MEXC launched its annual 0808 Stock Season. As part of it, MEXC and Kaito ran a $100,000 Stock Products Education Contest on Kaito Katalyst.

The problem

If you trade crypto, buying a token is second nature. Stocks come with a whole new set of things to learn: earnings, sectors, how indexes move, and what separates a share from a tokenized share or a stock future. MEXC offered all three in one account, but most traders on X couldn’t tell you the difference.

MEXC also competes in one of Kaito’s most crowded categories. In the week before launch, Binance, Hyperliquid and Coinbase held about two-thirds of exchange mindshare between them, and MEXC sat at #11 with 1.48%.

MEXC needed creators who could explain its stock products to crypto audiences while generating enough reach to compete with the largest exchanges.

How MEXC ran it on Kaito Studio

MEXC chose Kaito Katalyst, Kaito Studio’s open contest mode. Any creator can join and post, and the reward pool is split by performance on a campaign leaderboard. This was the first major exchange campaign to run Katalyst and Partner together, with Partner handling referrals.

2,106 creators joined the contest, from accounts with under 1,000 followers to 66 with more than 50,000. 151 joiners had 30,000+ followers, and about half of them (76) went on to submit.

The brief asked each creator to pick one stock product, market topic or use case and explain it: the need, the product that fits, how it works and how it differs from the alternatives. MEXC led with Stock Futures and used zero fees as the supporting point. Every post had to describe at least one MEXC stock product accurately and tie any zero-fee claim to that product and its conditions. Only posts that met every requirement counted toward the leaderboard.

Kaito Studio checked every submission against X data, ran the leaderboard and paid creators in USDT.

“Kaito Studio ran our Stock Education Contest end to end, from submissions and eligibility checks to rankings and rewards, and took a lot of the operational load off our team. Kaito was responsive to our questions throughout the campaign, and the first-week snapshot and final report gave us every number we needed for our internal review. For a brand team running several campaigns at once, that is real time saved. We would do it again.” – Yuan Breeze, Marketing KOL Advisor, MEXC

Two tracks

MEXC split the pool in two: $70,000 for posts, threads and articles on X, and $30,000 for native X videos of 60 seconds or more.

Video made up 9% of submissions but earned 13% of impressions. Creators kept posting to the very end of the campaign with the best days for impressions and smart engagement coming in the final week.

The results

Reach and cost

827 creators submitted 4,051 posts and videos, about five each, and reached 17M impressions. On the $100,000 reward pool, that works out to a $5.88 CPM.

Standout posts

A few standout posts, picked for how clearly they explained MEXC’s stock products to a crypto audience:

• @oxgeek spent 15 hours on a 3-minute video explaining which MEXC stock product fits which use case, with chapters for stock futures, RealStocks, tokenized stocks and pre-IPO. It reached 21.7K views.
• @Elizacreatez explained the difference between real stocks, stock futures and tokenized stocks in 150 seconds, and reached 20.6K views.
• @hollyyy started from moves crypto traders already watch, like Nvidia earnings, Tesla volatility and the S&P 500, and used them to explain why stock futures matter.
• @Dashke covered how they have stopped seeing futures as just a way to get exposure without owning the stock, and had started looking at MEXC’s new product line more holistically.

Smart engagement

Kaito compared daily averages during the campaign with the week before launch, counting creator submissions and organic posts in the crypto conversation it tracks. Posts about MEXC rose 5.2x with a 2.4x lift in impressions.

Crypto smart engagement rose 8.0x, which counts engagement only from Smart Followers, the X accounts that are central to crypto based on Kaito’s proprietary social graph.

Mindshare

MEXC’s average exchange mindshare rank moved from #11 to #10, gaining ground against other exchanges such as Binance, Hyperliquid, OKX and Bybit. Within Exchange Mindshare, MEXC held #8 for nine days and reached #5 on 13 September.

What your team can take from this

MEXC made four choices before the first post went up. You can use them for any campaign that asks a crypto audience to learn something new.

1. Teach the product first. MEXC asked creators to explain a need, a product and how it works, with zero fees as supporting evidence. That gave 827 people something specific to say about stocks, and smart engagement rose 8x on the week before.
2. Give video its own track. 134 video creators made 9% of submissions and earned 13% of impressions, and each video earned about 56% more impressions than a written post. A separate pool let MEXC require captions, a 60-second minimum and a disclaimer for video without adding those rules to every thread.
3. Write the guardrails into the brief. Stock products carry risk, and fee claims carry conditions. MEXC required accurate product descriptions, zero-fee claims tied to the right product, and a risk disclaimer on video. Only posts that met every requirement counted, so creators won by getting the details right.
4. Plan for the final week. Creators keep posting until a leaderboard settles. MEXC’s best days for impressions and smart engagement came on 14 and 15 September. If you have news or support for creators, save it for the last stretch.

Where Kaito Studio fits

Kaito Studio is a creator marketplace for frontier tech. Built on licensed access to X data, it helps brands and agencies find the right voices and turn them into distribution.

• A creator network: reach creators across communities, regions and languages, including people who already use your product.
• Three ways to run a campaign: open contests with Katalyst, hand-picked lists with Select, and pay-for-results with Partner.
• Performance you can trace: tie clicks, sign-ups and mindshare to the creators who drove them, with Kaito Pulse adding an additional layer of verified data.
• Contracts and payouts in one place: manage agreements, verify posts and pay creators in one workflow, so your team can focus on strategy and creative.

For brands and agencies: planning a launch or creator campaign? Let’s talk.

For creators: we keep bringing frontier tech and finance projects to Studio. Find a campaign that fits your audience.