Verdict: Smart Prop Trader is not a firm you can buy a challenge from. It told traders on 27 November 2024 that it would stop onboarding, and wound its funded programme down on 29 December 2024. Since early February 2025 its domain has served a 301 redirect to FXnity, a Costa Rica-registered CFD broker that sells no funded accounts and does not accept US residents. This page exists for two readers: former Smart Prop Trader traders, and anyone who still sees the brand listed as “available” on a comparison site — several still do. The single biggest caveat: this was not a lapsed domain someone else bought. Smart Prop Trader’s founder introduced FXnity to his own traders himself — but neither company has disclosed what his role in it is, and we do not assert one.

Key terms, as they stood on the last archived page

These are the programme terms Smart Prop Trader published on its own homepage. The figures below are taken from the last snapshot the Internet Archive holds of a working smartproptrader.com, captured on 2 February 2025. They are a historical record, not a live offer.

• Challenge fee: $57, $97, $197, $297 and $497 for the five account tiers, described as “refundable” and “reimbursed to you with the 3rd Profit Split”.
• Account sizes: $5,000, $10,000, $25,000, $50,000 and $100,000, with a scaling plan the firm said could reach a $2.5m virtual account.
• Profit targets: two phases — 7% in step one, 5% in step two.
• Maximum loss: 8% of the initial balance, static for the life of the account.
• Daily loss limit: 4% of the initial balance, measured against balance or equity, whichever was greater at the 5pm EST daily reset.
• Profit split: a default of 75:25, rising to 95:5 for traders who met the scaling plan conditions.
• Minimum trading days: zero, with no maximum either; the firm advertised funding “in as little as 1 day”.
• Payout timing: a first profit split requestable 24 hours after the initial post-evaluation trade.

What Smart Prop Trader was

Smart Prop Trader sold two-step forex evaluations on simulated accounts. A launch press release dated 6 January 2023 said the firm “was launched by Blake Olson at the end of 2022”, described it as Austin, Texas based, and pitched speed as the differentiator: traders could “get fully funded with up to $400,000 in just a few days”, with payouts processing “within a single day, while the industry standard is still a full week”.

The corporate reality was slightly different from the Texas branding. The site’s own footer named the operator as Smart Prop Trader LLC, “a US company registered at 5830 E. 2nd Street, Casper, WY 82609” — a Wyoming limited liability company at a registered-agent address. The same footer stated the firm was “not a broker/dealer” and accepted “no financial deposits”, and that clients were given “access exclusively to demo accounts within a simulated trading environment”.

The same footer declared that the company “does not provide any of the investment services listed in the Capital Market Undertakings Act No. 256/2004 Coll.” — Czech securities legislation with no bearing on a Wyoming LLC, boilerplate lifted from a Prague-based competitor and never corrected. It is a useful gauge of how carefully these documents were drafted.

Its final homepage claimed “102K+ Traders”, “98% Satisfaction” and a community that had “shared in over $5 million of payouts”. None of those figures was ever independently audited.

The payout question, and what happened at the end

This is the section that matters, and it is the reason the page exists. Smart Prop Trader’s wind-down is widely cited as one of the more orderly exits in a sector that produced a great many disorderly ones. That reputation is not baseless, but it rests on a much narrower evidence base than the retellings suggest, and it sits alongside a payout dispute that predated the closure by five months.

In July 2024, the comparison site Prop Firm Match delisted the firm. FX News Group reported on 8 July 2024 that the delisting followed “several payouts pending for more than 30 days”, contested breach decisions, and traders being banned from the firm’s Discord “for raising these concerns” — adding that it had approached the firm on 2 July and “has not received any response, despite reminders”. Smart Prop Trader rejected the characterisation: “We have and continue to make payouts to traders every week.” It was never relisted; the Prop Firm Match entry now records only that the firm is delisted.

Finance Magnates reported on 28 November 2024 that the firm, led by chief executive Blake Olson, had announced the previous day that it was closing. The company’s statement read:

“Smart Prop Trader will no longer onboard new traders. Smart Prop Trader is committed to doing the right thing by prioritizing fairness, transparency, and respect for our traders, and providing extra time for traders to earn payouts.”

The published timetable gave existing traders until 29 December 2024 to keep trading, promised that regular payout schedules would be maintained through the wind-down, and offered refunds to November account holders who were at break-even or better. Traders in good standing after 29 December were told they would receive an individual resolution plan to honour outstanding payouts.

What we could not verify. We could not verify that a single trader was paid after 29 December 2024. Every “traders were paid” statement we traced — across trade press, prop-firm directories and closure round-ups — leads back to the firm’s own November announcement rather than to any trader, auditor or administrator. There is no audited payout report, no independent confirmation of the sum paid during the wind-down, and no regulator overseeing the process, because there was none to oversee it. The reputation for an orderly exit rests, so far as we can establish, entirely on the firm’s own account of itself.

Nor did traders fill that gap publicly. We searched r/propfirm, r/PropFirmTester, r/Forex, r/Daytrading and r/FuturesTrading and found no thread or post in which anyone says they were or were not paid during the wind-down. That silence is weak evidence in either direction — Reddit’s index is lossy for older posts and complaints often live in comments rather than threads — but it is worth stating that the corroboration simply is not there.

What does exist points both ways. The firm’s Trustpilot profile still shows a 4.3 score across 2,508 reviews, the overwhelming majority positive. But 173 are one-star, and reviews left after the wind-down allege the opposite of an orderly exit. “Stay away from this company because they are unreliable, deny me my reward, and ignore my messages,” wrote Sienna Akhtar on 7 January 2025. On 10 February 2025 a reviewer posting as vins embaran wrote: “SPT did not give me, my funded account or refund for my fees.” The last review of any kind is dated 8 May 2025. We could not verify any individual account, and the firm — which had denied the earlier delayed-payout claims — was no longer operating to answer them.

The rules that decided accounts

Three mechanics did most of the work of ending accounts, and they are worth understanding because they recur across the sector.

The first is the static drawdown, which the firm presented as trader-friendly and largely was. An 8% maximum loss fixed to the opening balance does not trail upwards behind profits, unlike the trailing models where profit tightens the noose rather than loosening it.

The second is the daily loss limit, and here the detail cut the other way. The 4% limit was calculated on “balance or equity, whichever is greater” at the 5pm EST reset, and unrealised drawdown on open positions counted against it intraday. Accounts breach on equity while the balance still looks healthy.

The third is the refundable fee, which was refundable only in a specific sense: it came back with the third profit split. A trader had to pass two phases, get funded, then complete three payout cycles before seeing the entry fee again. Most challenge buyers never reach a third payout at any firm, so for the majority the fee functioned as a non-refundable purchase whatever the marketing called it.

A fourth mechanic appears only in trader accounts, not in the published terms. Several one-star Trustpilot reviewers from late 2024 say their accounts were closed shortly before a scheduled payout under a clause they quote as “General Exploitation of a Demo Environment”. One reviewer, Daniel Huang, wrote on 30 September 2024 that “the day before payout they send me email says ‘exercised General Exploitation of a Demo Environment’ and then BAN all my access”. A catch-all discretionary clause invoked at the payout stage is the single most consequential term in any evaluation contract, and Smart Prop Trader’s public rules did not define this one. We could not verify the individual cases, and the firm disputed the broader payout-delay allegations at the time.

What the domain does now, and what it does and does not show

Today https://smartproptrader.com/ returns an HTTP 301 redirect to https://fxnity.com/. We confirmed this on 25 August 2026. FXnity is not a prop firm. It sells “Prime Of Prime Liquidity” and CFDs on forex, metals, stocks, indices and crypto, advertising 1:500 leverage and 100% STP/ECN execution. Its own footer names the operator as “FXnity Limited Liability Company (FXnity Sociedad De Responsabilidad Limitada)”, registered in Escazú, San José, Costa Rica, under registration number 3-102-920598. Costa Rica has a securities regulator in SUGEVAL, but it does not license retail forex and CFD brokerage — firms register there as ordinary companies. That number is a corporate registration, not a financial licence, and FXnity’s site names no regulator anywhere.

The redirect is not new. The Internet Archive’s last capture of a working Smart Prop Trader site is 2 February 2025; its first capture of the redirect to fxnity.com is 10 February 2025, and the archive’s earliest capture of fxnity.com itself carries the same date. The change therefore happened in the week between those two dates, roughly six weeks after the funded programme wound down.

This is not a lapsed domain that a stranger picked up. The connection between the two runs through Smart Prop Trader’s founder, and it is documented. FXnity Sociedad De Responsabilidad Limitada was incorporated in Costa Rica on 9 December 2024 — eleven days after Smart Prop Trader told its traders it was closing, and three weeks before the funded programme shut. That date comes from Costa Rica’s Registro Nacional, cross-checked against GLEIF’s record for the same registration number. Blake Olson then introduced FXnity himself, in the farewell video he published to his own audience on 31 January 2025, and pointed business enquiries at “FXnity’s support (email or live chat)”. The Discord server Smart Prop Trader had linked from its homepage, created in February 2022, now carries the FXnity name with Olson still named on the invite. Even the paid search traffic followed: archived FXnity URLs still carry Smart Prop Trader’s branded Google Ads parameters.

What is not established is who owns or runs FXnity, and we assert nothing about it. No filing, announcement or public statement we found describes Olson’s role in the company, and neither business has disclosed a relationship. His LinkedIn profile still lists Smart Prop Trader and does not mention FXnity; his most recent prop-firm video, published in July 2026, does not mention it either. FXnity’s own website contains no reference to Smart Prop Trader or to Blake Olson anywhere. The Costa Rican record names only what appears to be a corporate-services agent, and the registered address is shared with at least one unrelated broker. On the available evidence, Smart Prop Trader’s founder pointed his firm’s audience, community and domain at FXnity. Whether he owns it, advises it, was paid to promote it, or has since moved on is on no public record we could reach.

Two details that look like evidence are not: the sites share no infrastructure (Cloudflare versus Amazon Route 53), and both offered cTrader, which Spotware licenses to hundreds of brokers. Neither says anything about ownership either way.

What we can say without qualification is the practical consequence. A trader who types the old address expecting a funded-account programme lands instead on a live brokerage offering a different product, run by an offshore entity whose own restricted-countries notice puts the United States first on the list — the jurisdiction Smart Prop Trader itself was registered in. Nothing on either end of that redirect explains the relationship to the trader making the journey.

How this wind-down compares

Profit-split comparisons are irrelevant for a firm that no longer trades. The useful comparison is how other closures were handled, and what became of the brand afterwards. Domain status below was checked directly on 25 August 2026.

Firm	How it ended	Gap from notice to shutdown	What the domain serves today
Smart Prop Trader	Voluntary closure announced 27 Nov 2024; trading ended 29 Dec 2024; refunds offered to break-even-or-better Nov account holders	32 days	HTTP 301 to fxnity.com, a Costa Rica CFD broker incorporated 11 days after the closure notice
My Forex Funds	Shut down overnight in Aug 2023 by a CFTC enforcement action alleging a $310m fraud	None — no notice	HTTP 200: a single message page from chief executive Murtuza Kazmi and a “Notify me” form
The Funded Trader	Suspended operations Mar 2024, promised an April relaunch, later saw traders report account closures	None — abrupt suspension	HTTP 402 “Payment required — DEPLOYMENT_DISABLED”: the Vercel deployment is switched off
Infinity Forex Funds	Ceased operating; the website outlived the firm	Not announced	HTTP 403 behind a JavaScript browser check — still resolving, still branded

On that comparison Smart Prop Trader sits at the better end: 32 days of notice, a published timetable and refunds are three things My Forex Funds and The Funded Trader traders never got. But the fourth column is the one to dwell on. A dead brand whose domain still resolves is now common enough to be a category — see Infinity Forex Funds, where the firm is gone but the website is not, and KortanaFX, paused for two years with its refund page removed. Smart Prop Trader is the variant where the domain does not merely linger but actively delivers traffic somewhere else.

Regulatory posture

Smart Prop Trader LLC was a Wyoming limited liability company. It held no financial services licence anywhere, was not a registered broker-dealer, was not an NFA member, and was supervised by no regulator. Accounts were explicitly simulated: the disclaimer described “demo accounts within a simulated trading environment” and hypothetical performance, and said the firm accepted no deposits. None of that was unusual — it is the standard posture for the retail evaluation sector, and it is exactly why closures here leave traders without recourse.

That absence of supervision is the whole story of the sector’s 2024, when more than fifty firms shut. We have mapped where the perimeter does and does not bite in our guide to prop firm regulation across the CFTC, FINRA and MiFID. Traders who want a firm answerable to someone should compare the structure against a regulated counterpart — Seven Points Capital, which operates through a FINRA broker-dealer, or FTMO, which owns a regulated broker in OANDA.

FAQ

Can I still buy a Smart Prop Trader challenge?
No. The firm stopped onboarding new traders on 27 November 2024 and ended its funded programme on 29 December 2024. The domain no longer serves a prop firm at all — it redirects to a separate company selling CFDs. Several comparison sites have not caught up: TheTrustedProp displays a “no longer operating” banner and a “Buy Challenge” button on the same page, while AllPropTradingFirms still presents the firm in the present tense under an “August 2026” heading, behind a sign-up link that now times out.

Were traders paid during the wind-down?
The firm committed publicly to maintaining regular payout schedules through 29 December 2024, to refunding November account holders at break-even or better, and to issuing individual resolution plans afterwards. We could not independently verify that every resolution plan was honoured, and no audited figures exist.

Is FXnity the same company as Smart Prop Trader?
No, and no one has claimed it is. They are separate entities in separate jurisdictions — Smart Prop Trader LLC in Wyoming, FXnity SRL in Costa Rica, incorporated on 9 December 2024. But this was not a domain sale: Smart Prop Trader’s founder introduced FXnity to his own traders, and the community and search traffic moved with it. What neither company has disclosed is what his role in FXnity is, if any.

Did Smart Prop Trader collapse or fail?
Nothing we found supports that framing. It announced a closure, set a date, offered refunds and gave a month’s notice. Trade coverage at the time treated it as an orderly exit and contrasted it favourably with firms that vanished overnight.

What should a former trader do now?
Preserve records — account statements, payout confirmations, the terms in force when you bought. There is no regulator to escalate to, so a card chargeback within your issuer’s time limit is realistically the only formal route, and for a 2024 purchase that window has almost certainly closed.

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.