A bitcoin prop firm lets you trade BTC with the firm's capital instead of your own. You pay a one-time fee for an evaluation on a simulated account; pass it, and you trade a funded account and keep up to 90% of the profit it makes. Fail it, and the fee is the most you can lose — you never deposit trading capital.
That model is the same everywhere. What is specific to bitcoin is how the rules meet a market that never closes and can move several percent in an afternoon. This guide walks through exactly that, with the numbers.
Why bitcoin is different from forex at a prop firm
- It never closes. Bitcoin trades 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — no Friday close, no Monday gap. The daily loss limit still resets once a day, at 00:00 UTC, weekends included.
- It moves more. A normal day for BTC can look like a bad week for a currency pair. A position size that is prudent on EUR/USD can be reckless on bitcoin.
- News still matters. Crypto traders often treat economic data as a forex problem. It isn't: inflation prints, interest-rate decisions and jobs reports move bitcoin too — and at most prop firms, ours included, the news rule covers every open position, whatever the instrument.
The rules that shape a bitcoin account
All of these are published before you pay. These are the ones that matter most when the instrument is BTC.
1. Risk per trade: 2%. No single position may lose more than 2% of your account equity, and positions in the same instrument count together. On a $50,000 account that is $1,000. The size that fits is simple arithmetic: risk ÷ stop distance. With bitcoin around $83,000 and a stop $1,000 away, 1 BTC would put the whole $1,000 at risk — no room left for the stop filling a little worse in a fast market. 0.8 BTC ($800 at risk) keeps a margin. Want a wider stop? Trade smaller. Our position-sizing guide works through more examples.
2. Position size: 2× the account. The total value of your positions in one instrument may not exceed twice the starting balance — $100,000 of BTC on a $50,000 account. In the example above, 0.8 BTC — about $66,000 — sits well inside that cap.
3. A stop-loss within 5 minutes of every entry. And never close a position before a stop is in place. Bitcoin's speed is exactly why this rule exists.
4. Daily 4%, overall 6%. Your equity — open positions included — can't fall more than 4% below the day's starting balance, or more than 6% overall. On a 1-Step evaluation the 6% trails your peak equity; on a 2-Step evaluation, and on every funded account, it is fixed from the starting balance.
5. The news window. No open positions from 5 minutes before to 5 minutes after a high-impact release. The window opens before the release: for a 13:30 UTC event you must already be flat at 13:24:59. A BTC position opened hours earlier and still running when the window opens counts too. Our news-window explainer has the details, and the calendar in the portal counts down to every event.
Spot or futures bitcoin?
At Drift Fund you choose the product at checkout:
- Futures — long or short, with leverage up to 100x. The classic prop-trading setup.
- Spot — no leverage (1×) and long-only: you buy bitcoin and can sell what you hold, but you can't short it. Fewer ways to get hurt, and fewer ways to profit from a falling market.
The rules are the same either way; what changes is what the account lets you do. We compared the two in detail in Spot vs Futures in Prop Trading. You can trade bitcoin in the browser terminal or, on futures, in MetaTrader 5 — also chosen at checkout.
How the profit reaches you
Once a funded account is at least 14 days old, you have traded on at least 5 separate days, and your profit is at least 3% of the initial balance, you can request a withdrawal. It is paid in crypto — USDT or USDC — to a wallet you control, after identity verification, and you keep up to 90% (100% with the Profit Split add-on). Most of our payouts are published with their on-chain transaction, so you can check them yourself on the payouts page — here is how to verify a payout.
How to judge any bitcoin prop firm
Before you pay anyone — us included — check five things:
- Are the rules published in full before you pay? Every limit, with numbers.
- What price do you trade at? It should track the real bitcoin market. Ask where it comes from.
- Is the news rule clear? Which events, how long the window is, and whether it covers crypto.
- Can you verify payouts yourself? An on-chain transaction is proof; a screenshot isn't.
- What happens at weekends? A 24/7 market needs risk rules you understand around the clock.
Where to start
The fee buys a fair test under published rules. Size every trade from the 2% rule, keep a stop on it, and be flat before the news windows, and the only thing left to decide the outcome is your trading.
Ready? Start a Challenge, or read the full rules first.