Guides / Guide
How to pass a crypto prop firm challenge
Passing is a budget: daily room, total room, trading days and the consistency rule. How to plan a challenge around each one, with our numbers.
No method passes every challenge, and nothing here is trading advice. What the rules do allow is planning: each one is a number you can budget before your first order. This guide works through a Classic 1-Step 10K account. The rules page has the same numbers for every model.
Start from the room, not the target
The profit target is $800. The room you have to get there is smaller, and it comes first: $400 in a day and $800 in total. Equity, open positions included, must stay at or above both floors at every moment, measured on the composite mark price. The first breach ends the account, however close to the target it was.
So decide, before each trade, how much of today's room its stop may use. The position size calculator takes the account size, your entry and your stop and returns a quantity, together with the share of a full day's room the stop would cost, including the taker fee of 0.05% on both legs.
Know where today's floor is
The daily loss limit resets at
00:00UTC. The new floor is the higher of balance and equity at 00:00 UTC, minus 4% of the starting balance. A winning day therefore raises tomorrow's floor: yesterday's profit is not room you can lose today. Because equity counts at the reset, an open profit carried past it raises the anchor as well, so the floor moves up under a position you still hold.
Before a market order goes in, its preview shows the mark price at which today's floor would break. The dashboard shows the room left today and in total. Check both before you add to a position.
Spread the profit over several days
Classic 1-Step asks for at least 3 trading days and limits your best day to 40% of the total profit. On a 10K account, a best day of $500 raises the target from $800 to $1,250. A large day does not fail the account; it moves the finish line. The consistency rule shows how the effective target is computed.
Test the plan before you trade it
Write your plan as a run of daily results and put it through the drawdown simulator. It uses the rules engine's own functions. Here is one such run on Classic 1-Step 10K, each day closed flat:
| Day | Result | Daily floor | Max-loss floor | Balance | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | +$300.00 | $9,600.00 | $9,200.00 | $10,300.00 | Inside both floors |
| 2 | +$200.00 | $9,900.00 | $9,200.00 | $10,500.00 | Inside both floors |
| 3 | −$100.00 | $10,100.00 | $9,200.00 | $10,400.00 | Inside both floors |
| 4 | +$300.00 | $10,000.00 | $9,200.00 | $10,700.00 | Inside both floors |
| 5 | +$200.00 | $10,300.00 | $9,200.00 | $10,900.00 | Target met: the phase passes |
A phase passes on the first day the profit reaches the effective target with the minimum days met and no position open. Change one day in the simulator and you can see how close a plan runs to either floor.
What ends a challenge early
- An intraday low. The floors are checked on every price move, not at the close. A day that ends green can still breach in the middle.
- One oversized position. A stop placed beyond today's floor means the floor, not the stop, decides the exit.
- Inactivity. An account with no fill for 30 days ends. There is no other time limit.
- A prohibited strategy. Hedging across accounts, copy trading between people, latency arbitrage, several identities, or closing and reopening around the reset to move the floor.
A short checklist
- Read the rules of your model on the rules page, or compare them on 1-Step vs 2-Step.
- Size every trade from the room, with the position size calculator.
- Check today's floor and the breach price in the order preview.
- Spread the profit over the minimum days and keep the best day within the limit.
- Close every position when the target is met: the phase completes only when you are flat.
Related
- Daily drawdown vs max drawdownTwo loss floors, measured differently: one resets every day, one never moves. Two worked examples show which one ends an account, and when.
- The consistency rule and minimum trading daysWhy one big day raises the target instead of failing you, how the effective target is computed, and what counts as a trading day.
- Daily loss limitThe daily loss limit is the most equity may fall in one trading day, measured from that day's anchor; crossing the floor ends the account.
- Position size calculator