Key terms at the $100,000 tier

• Challenge fee: $622 list, $249 under the site-wide promotional banner, for 1 Step Nitro (/programs, 24 August 2026); entry pricing starts at $24.
• Account sizes: $5,000 to $300,000; maximum allocation $1m.
• Profit split: 90% of simulated profit up to $10,000 across all evaluation funded accounts on one registered email, then 80% — clauses 4.I.1 and 4.I.2 of the terms and conditions. 2 Step Plus pays 70%.
• Profit target: 10% on 1 Step Nitro; 8% then 5% on 2 Step Plus; none on Instant.
• Maximum drawdown: 6% trailing lock on 1 Step Nitro, 10% balance-based on 2 Step Plus, 3% to 6% trailing on Instant.
• Daily loss limit: 4% ($4,000) on both evaluation programmes, 3% ($3,000) on Instant.
• Minimum trading days: five funded days on every programme; three evaluation days on 2 Step Plus.
• Payout frequency: on demand, minimum 1% of initial balance before the split, via Rise or direct crypto transfer (payments FAQ).

What the firm actually sells

FTM runs three products: a one-phase 1 Step Nitro, a two-phase 2 Step Plus, and three Instant tiers that skip evaluation. All of it is simulated, and the terms are blunt about that: “No actual financial instruments… are bought or sold. No counterparty engages in or bears risk from these trades.” Execution runs on MetaTrader 5, cTrader, TradeLocker and Match-Trader, at leverage to 1:100, swap-free, with news trading and weekend holding permitted and no time limit on any programme.

FTM launched its own brokerage arm in July 2025; chief executive Revin Zabala said then that “launching our own brokerage means we are taking full responsibility for the quality and integrity of their trading environment.” That appeared in a Finance Magnates thought-leadership placement — a firm-supplied channel, not independent reporting, and it should be read as such.

The payout record, and what it does not show

FTM publishes more payout data than almost any firm in this cluster. Its rewards ledger showed $7,195,971.89 across 4,811 rewards on 24 August 2026, averaging 27 minutes 54 seconds, 99.2% inside a one-hour service level. It splits the total by rail — Rise 74.1% ($5.33m), crypto 25.9% ($1.86m) — names the largest single reward ($40,513, February 2026) and the single-day record ($71,373 on 21 August 2026), and publishes transaction hashes for the crypto leg.

Four things could not be verified. Trustpilot returned HTTP 403 to every automated request during this review, so no independent score is cited here. The ledger is self-published and self-synced, with no auditor attached. The on-chain hashes could not be resolved from this environment, and they cover only the crypto rail — the Rise rail, 74.1% of the value, has no public proof at all. And FTM does not publish total fees collected, so no payout-to-fee ratio or pass rate can be derived. A large payout total says the firm pays. It does not say what share of buyers get paid.

The speed claim narrows on inspection. The marketing line is “24 Hours — Or We Pay Double”; the FAQ defines that clock as 24 business hours, 08:00 to 17:00 ET Monday to Friday — nine hours a day, so roughly 2.7 calendar days. The double-reward remedy covers only rewards up to $1,000, and is void if the firm asks you to change payment method and you do not reply. A 5% processing fee also comes out of the trader’s share on every crypto reward, taking a nominal 90% split to about 85.5% net.

The two gates that appear nowhere on the pricing page

Clause 4.H.2 reads: “Funded Trader Markets reserves the right to request for a verification call (or interview) with the Trader before (or upon) a performance reward and before (or upon) issuing a simulated funded account. Failure to attend the verification call within the requested time period may result in the forfeiture of the performance reward.”

Clause 4.H.1 reads: “Funded Trader Markets maintains the right to refuse any funded account if trading activities pose a risk to our risk management protocols. We may also adjust your leverage to 1:10 if we determine your trading strategies are too risky.”

Neither clause defines its trigger. “Too risky” has no stated threshold; “the requested time period” has no stated length. Neither says who conducts the call, what standard applies, or whether a decision can be appealed. Both are exercised after the trader has paid, traded and produced a profit — and both are invisible at the point of sale. The strings “verification call”, “interview” and “too risky” appear on none of the eleven FTM pages checked here — the homepage, /programs, the three programme pages, /how-it-works, the FAQ index and its three rule categories, /rewards, /refund-policy and /promo-terms. They exist only in the terms, behind a footer link, roughly 1,120 words into a 4,300-word document.

A third responsiveness gate sits in the payments FAQ: if FTM contacts you about a reward request and you fail to acknowledge it within 36 hours, “this will lead to an auto-rejection of the reward”. The fastest-payouts positioning therefore rests on the trader being reachable on FTM’s schedule — and the penalty for not being reachable is the reward itself.

Rules that fail traders

The 1 Step Nitro consistency rule is the sharpest. In the challenge phase no single day may produce more than 50% of the profit target; once funded, no single day may exceed 45% of total profit, measured on 17:00 EST balances. Breaching it does not breach the account — it locks the payout. The trader must keep trading until the best day falls back below the threshold, carrying risk purely to dilute a good day.

Beyond that: the 6% maximum drawdown on 1 Step Nitro is trailing-lock, so the floor follows equity up until it locks; once profit passes $30,000 a partial reward request must cover at least 80% of eligible profit or it is rejected; exceeding maximum allocation can void rewards and reset accounts to base under clause 4.J; and there are no fee refunds — clause 4.G states “All sales are final”, the advertised refund arriving instead as a performance bonus equal to the fee, paid with the third reward and unavailable on Instant Funding or Nitro X.

The identity rules bite hardest on shared households. Purchases and KYC submissions via VPN or VPS are prohibited, the purchase IP country must match the KYC country, trading IPs must not overlap another user’s, and US-origin IPs are barred from MT5 and cTrader. A wallet address matching another user’s, or a similar email, “may forfeit the reward”.

Credit where due: FTM refuses to police “toxic trading” or “gambling”, permits martingale and layering, and imposes no lot-size consistency rule — “If your margin allows the trade, the trade is valid. Period.” Better drafting than most of this sector manages, which makes 4.H.1’s vagueness harder to explain.

How FTM compares

Verified 24 August 2026 from FundedNext and ICFunded; fuller assessments sit in the ICFunded review and the FundedFirm review.

Regulatory posture: three entities, three jurisdictions

The contracting party named at the top of the terms is FTM Funded Trader Markets LTD, a Cyprus company registered under number HE462185 in Nicosia. The next sentence hands the product somewhere else: “Simulated trading services are provided by Funded Trader Markets LTD, incorporated in Saint Lucia under registration number 2025-00239.” A third entity, Formed Technologies INT FZCO, UAE number 36580, is merchant of record for some clients. Which one you contract with, the site says, “is determined at the time of account registration”.

A Cyprus company number is not a licence. FTM holds no CySEC authorisation, claims none anywhere on its site, and states plainly that it “is not a broker, does not offer financial or investment advice, and does not facilitate trades in live markets”. A search of the CySEC register of Cypriot investment firms returned no match. The clearest tell is FTM’s own restricted-jurisdiction list, which bars residents of Cuba, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen, North Korea — and Cyprus. A CySEC-licensed firm does not exclude its home market; an unlicensed Cyprus company has to. That is the pattern in our explainer on why registered is not regulated, and the same split between a regulated-sounding name and the entity that actually executes appears in the Hantec Trader review.

One artefact is worth flagging: clause 1.A refers to “services offered by Funded Trader Markets s.r.o.” — a Czech company form matching none of the three disclosed entities and appearing nowhere else on the site. Almost certainly an unedited template, but it is the governing clause of the agreement that controls your payout. Where the perimeter sits for firms like this is covered in our analysis of prop firm regulation.

FAQ

Is Funded Trader Markets regulated? No. The Cyprus entity holds a company registration number, not a financial services licence, and does not appear in the CySEC register. The firm states it is not a broker and that all accounts are simulated, which sits outside most conduct regimes — so no client-money or compensation protections apply.

Can FTM refuse to pay after a verification call? The terms say non-attendance “may result in the forfeiture of the performance reward” — discretionary rather than automatic, and no independent case of it being applied could be verified here. The point is that the clause exists, is undefined, and is not disclosed at the point of payment.

What is the real profit split? Ninety per cent applies to the first $10,000 of simulated profit across all evaluation funded accounts on one registered email, then 80%. 2 Step Plus pays 70% throughout. A 5% crypto processing fee comes out of the trader’s share, so a 90% split nets closer to 85.5%.

What if I make most of my profit in one day? On 1 Step Nitro nothing breaches — but the payout locks. No single day may exceed 50% of the profit target in the challenge, or 45% of total profit once funded. You must keep trading until the best day falls below that share: holding risk for a rule, not an edge.

This review is independent editorial analysis and is not financial, investment, or trading advice, and is not an endorsement or solicitation. The Industry Spread has no affiliate or referral relationship with the firms covered. Proprietary trading challenges carry a fee that is generally non-refundable, most participants do not reach a funded account, and funded capital is the firm’s capital, not the trader’s. Terms change frequently — always verify current rules directly with the firm before paying any fee.

Image: webcam by Nenad Stojkovic, licensed under CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.