Velotrade is a crypto prop trading firm that offers funded accounts up to $200,000 with a profit split of up to 90%. It launched its prop trading offering in early 2026 and is crypto-only, which shapes everything from its rule design to its platform choices.
This review covers challenge structure, drawdown rules, trading conditions, platform, payout mechanics, and who this firm is realistically suited for. The goal is an accurate assessment, not a promotional summary.
If you are new to the funded trading model and want to understand how it works before evaluating specific firms, read what crypto prop trading is first.
Highlights of this article
- Velotrade launched its crypto prop offering in early 2026 with an institutional team background in professional finance
- Two challenge formats are available: a 2-step evaluation and a 1-step evaluation, across six account sizes
- The drawdown model is fixed balance-based, not trailing — a meaningful structural advantage for active traders
- No consistency rule, news trading allowed, and weekend holding permitted across both challenge formats
- Profit split reaches up to 90% on funded accounts with no time limit on trading periods
About Velotrade
Velotrade launched its crypto prop trading offering in early 2026, built around a specific diagnosis of what is broken in the existing market.
Most prop firms that offer crypto today started in forex. They built their rule architecture around forex assumptions — markets that close on Friday, volatility calibrated to pip ranges, news trading restricted around a handful of scheduled economic events — and then added crypto instruments on top without reworking the underlying policy logic.
The result is a structural mismatch that creates avoidable friction for crypto traders:
- Trailing drawdowns that recalculate your breach level as your equity rises, punishing profitable runs and creating breaches that have nothing to do with strategy failure
- Consistency rules that cap how much profit you can generate on any single day, forcing traders to pass on high-conviction setups to avoid a technical disqualification
- Weekend holding bans imported from forex, where markets actually close — applied to crypto, which trades 24/7, they serve no real risk management function
- News trading restrictions calibrated for forex event windows, blocking crypto traders from participating in some of the highest-quality directional setups in the market
- Vague rule language written without institutional precision, leaving enforcement gaps that get resolved against the trader
Velotrade was built to remove those friction points by design. The founding team has backgrounds at Dresdner Kleinwort, JP Morgan, and Bank of America, and the wider group has been featured in Bloomberg, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and on Nasdaq. That professional finance background produces a different kind of rule document — precise, internally consistent, and written so that a trader can read it once and know exactly where they stand.
The firm is crypto-only. It does not offer forex or equities. That is a deliberate choice — it means every rule, risk parameter, and platform decision is calibrated to how crypto markets actually behave, not borrowed from a product that trades in a different asset class with different session structures and volatility profiles.
Challenge structure
Velotrade offers two evaluation formats and six account sizes.
2-step challenge
The 2-step challenge requires traders to pass two sequential evaluation phases before accessing a funded account.
| Parameter | Phase 1 | Phase 2 | Funded |
|---|---|---|---|
| Profit target | 10% | 5% | — |
| Max daily loss | 5% | 5% | — |
| Max overall loss | 10% | 10% | — |
| Min trading days | 4 days | 4 days | — |
| Trading period | Unlimited | Unlimited | Indefinite |
| Profit split | — | — | Up to 90% |
1-step challenge
The 1-step challenge has a single evaluation phase with tighter parameters in exchange for a faster path to funding.
| Parameter | Phase 1 | Funded |
|---|---|---|
| Profit target | 10% | — |
| Max daily loss | 4% | — |
| Max overall loss | 7% | — |
| Min trading days | 4 days | — |
| Trading period | Unlimited | Indefinite |
| Profit split | — | Up to 90% |
The 1-step format has a narrower daily loss limit (4% vs 5%) and a tighter overall drawdown (7% vs 10%). The trade-off is a simpler evaluation path for traders who are confident in their consistency.
Account sizes and pricing
| Account size | 2-step fee | 1-step fee |
|---|---|---|
| $5,000 | $60 | $72 |
| $10,000 | $120 | $132 |
| $25,000 | $300 | $330 |
| $50,000 | $540 | $594 |
| $100,000 | $899 | $1,199 |
| $200,000 | $1,549 | $1,679 |
The $50,000 account is the most commonly selected tier and is positioned as the default starting point for most traders. Fees are commensurate with standard market rates for the account sizes offered.
Drawdown model
Velotrade uses a fixed balance-based drawdown model, not a trailing drawdown.
This distinction has a direct impact on how challenging the evaluation is in practice.
A trailing drawdown recalculates your maximum loss threshold as your equity rises. If you grow a $50,000 account to $55,000, a trailing model might shift your breach level upward, reducing effective risk room even during a profitable run. It is a more aggressive risk control mechanism that regularly catches otherwise competent traders through equity-path dynamics rather than strategy failure.
A fixed drawdown stays anchored to the starting balance. If your breach limit is set at 10% on a $50,000 account, it remains at $5,000 regardless of gains made during the evaluation. That gives traders a stable risk framework that does not penalize drawdown recoveries or normal intraday volatility.
For active traders who understand their own drawdown profile, a fixed model is meaningfully easier to operate within. This is one of the more trader-friendly structural decisions Velotrade has made, and it is not universal in the category.
For a full breakdown of drawdown types and how they affect pass rates, read crypto prop firm rules and drawdowns explained.
Trading rules
What is allowed
- News trading: Permitted. There are no restricted windows around economic data releases or macro events.
- Weekend holding: Permitted. Positions can be held across the weekend close.
- Expert advisors (EAs): Permitted within defined risk parameters. Latency exploitation and tick-scalping strategies that abuse data feed behavior are prohibited.
- Copy trading: Permitted under standard conditions. Coordinated copy-trading across multiple accounts to manipulate results is not.
- VPN and VPS: Permitted for legitimate routing and execution purposes.
- Overnight holding: Permitted.
- Hedging: Permitted within defined parameters.
What is not allowed
- Latency arbitrage and tick scalping
- Coordinated account manipulation
- Strategies specifically designed to exploit the simulation environment rather than reflect real market behavior
The full policy stack is available on the rules page. Reading it completely before placing a first trade is not optional if you want to avoid procedural disqualification.
No consistency rule
Velotrade does not enforce a consistency rule. Some firms require traders to avoid generating more than a set percentage of total profit on any single trading day — a constraint that penalizes high-conviction trades and forces artificial behavioral patterns.
Without a consistency rule, traders can execute concentrated positions when their edge is clearest without risk of technical breach for a single outsized win.
Platform
Velotrade operates on dxTrader, an institutional-grade platform with a credible track record across professional trading environments.
dxTrader supports advanced order types, real-time P&L tracking, and reliable execution under volatile conditions — characteristics that matter materially in crypto markets, where price action during liquidity events can expose platform quality gaps quickly.
Traders who have used dxTrader in other contexts will find the environment familiar. Those new to it face a short learning curve, but nothing that should affect evaluation performance for traders with established strategy processes.
Payouts and profit split
The profit split on funded Velotrade accounts reaches up to 90%. The 80% baseline is standard market behavior in 2026, and Velotrade's ceiling matches or exceeds most peers.
Payout mechanics — including thresholds, cadence, and currency options — should be confirmed directly on the challenges page before committing, as terms are subject to update.
As a firm that launched in early 2026, Velotrade does not yet have a multi-year payout track record to point to. The institutional background of the founding team provides above-average credibility signals, but payout history will build over time. Verifying current payout terms and conditions directly before committing is the right approach with any provider.
Pros and cons
What works
- Built around a specific diagnosis: Velotrade launched to fix five known problems in the category — trailing drawdowns, consistency rules, forex-imported weekend and news restrictions, and vague rule language. Every one of those is addressed in the rule set by design.
- Fixed drawdown model: Does not trail equity peaks. Simpler and less punishing to manage.
- No consistency rule: Traders can run concentrated positions without artificial behavioral constraints.
- News and weekend flexibility: No restricted windows around events, no forced position closure at weekends.
- Crypto-native design: All rules and risk parameters calibrated to crypto market behavior, not borrowed from forex assumptions.
- Institutional founding team: Professional finance background produces cleaner, more precise policy design than many operator-built alternatives.
What to weigh
- Maximum funding cap of $200,000: Firms like HyroTrader and FundedNext offer higher headline maximums. For traders targeting multi-hundred-thousand-dollar funded accounts in a single pass, that is a relevant constraint.
- Platform learning curve: dxTrader is capable but less universally familiar than MT4/MT5. Traders new to the platform should account for an adjustment period before their evaluation.
- Crypto-only scope: This is by design and a deliberate advantage for dedicated crypto traders, but traders who run mixed forex/crypto strategies will need a different or additional provider.
Who is Velotrade for?
Velotrade is best suited to traders who meet most of the following profile:
- Experienced in crypto markets specifically. The firm is designed for traders who understand 24/7 volatility, crypto-native liquidity behavior, and event-driven price action. It is not a learning environment.
- Strategy-driven with defined risk parameters. The rule stack rewards traders who run systematic, process-consistent approaches rather than discretionary improvisation.
- Prioritizing reliability over promotional economics. If your primary filter is headline profit split, several newer firms advertise marginally higher ceilings. If your primary filter is operator credibility, payout track record, and policy integrity, Velotrade is consistently near the top of a peer comparison.
- Running strategies that benefit from flexibility. News trading, weekend holding, and no consistency cap make Velotrade well-suited to event-driven or momentum strategies that concentrate around specific market conditions.
It is less suited to:
- Beginners looking for a structured learning environment. For newer traders, the challenge mechanics will be difficult to navigate without a strong prior foundation.
- Traders who need maximum account size above $200,000. Other firms offer higher caps.
- Multi-market traders who need forex coverage alongside crypto.
Verdict
Velotrade is new to the prop trading space and is transparent about that. What it brings instead is a clear-eyed diagnosis of what is broken across the category — trailing drawdowns, consistency caps, forex-imported weekend rules, vague enforcement language — and a rule set designed from scratch to avoid all of it.
Whether that bet pays off will depend on execution over time. But the structural decisions are already made, and they are among the most trader-friendly in the current peer set. For experienced crypto traders who have lost funded status to a technicality, or passed on a setup to avoid a consistency breach, Velotrade is worth examining carefully.
Review the full challenge options and pricing, then validate all enforcement detail in the rules before buying.
Frequently Asked Questions
About the author
Vittorio De Angelis
Executive Chairman
Former equity-derivatives trader at JP Morgan, Dresdner Kleinwort and Bank of America in London. Later Head of Brokerage at a global broker in Hong Kong.
View author page
