is it unreasonable to say they have already paid for the MM with historical payouts?
I believe it is unreasonable. The MM has to be built at every round, so Numerai continuously needs the users’ models. But without reward the users would stop submitting.
Just to be clear, I like the current tournament and MMC is much better than TC. I don’t even want the models to be rewarded for predictions that are either useless or detrimental to the hedge fund (if the fund doesn’t go well, everybody lose).
My only concern is that MMC and TC do not take into consideration the effort and risk (!) of building the MM and Numerai doesn’t seem to care much about that. Numerai even considered going for 0 CORR multiplier. That is what worries me.