Verdict: Velotrade is a six-month-old Hong Kong crypto prop firm with the most checkable payout proof we have audited: all 60 published withdrawals resolve to real Arbitrum transactions. It suits disciplined traders who want static drawdown, no consistency rule and 24/7 pricing on a small account. It does not suit anyone planning a large first withdrawal: clause 5.4(f) caps the first two payouts at 20 times the challenge fee and forfeits the excess, a limit that appears nowhere in the marketing.
Key terms, from Velotrade’s own published rules
- Challenge fees: derived from the firm’s own payout table — $40 / $5K, $74 / $10K, $165 / $25K, $305 / $50K (payouts page, accessed 30 August 2026).
- Account sizes: $5,000 to $100,000 on CLASSIC; $5,000 to $200,000 on PRO 1-Step only (rules).
- Profit split: 80% standard, 90% via a paid add-on costing 20% of the challenge fee.
- Profit target: 10% on both 1-Step plans; 10% then 5% on CLASSIC 2-Step.
- Maximum drawdown: static, fixed from initial balance — 10% (CLASSIC 2-Step), 7% (CLASSIC 1-Step), 3% (PRO 1-Step).
- Daily loss limit: 5% / 4% / 3% respectively, recalculated from balance daily at 00:30 UTC.
- Payouts: first request 14 days after the first funded trade, then weekly; minimum $100; USDC or USDT within 24 hours of approval — but the first two are capped at 20× the fee, excess forfeited (terms, clause 5.4(f), updated 1 July 2026).
- Minimum trading days: five per phase. No time limit.
Which Velotrade is this?
There are two. Velotrade Management Limited has run a Hong Kong invoice-financing marketplace since 2016 and was the first receivables-financing platform to obtain a Securities and Futures Commission Type 1 licence, in November 2018. The prop firm is a separate company: Velotrade Re Limited, incorporated November 2025, launched 13 March 2026.
The marketing does not draw the distinction. The homepage says the team “has processed $2.5B+ in client payouts since 2016”; the about page puts the same figure accurately, as invoice-finance disbursements to SME clients by the older entity, now demoted to a /legacy-business page. The Bloomberg, Financial Times and Nasdaq logos beneath are captioned “From the founders of Velotrade (est. 2016), featured in”. Velotrade’s own press page lists one article, its own API announcement.
The founders are real: chief executive Gianluca Pizzituti traded derivatives at Dresdner Kleinwort; executive chairman Vittorio De Angelis traded equity derivatives at JP Morgan and Bank of America. On launch, Pizzituti said: “We are not here to collect challenge fees and hope people fail. Our revenue model is tied to trader performance. That changes everything about how you design rules, and how you treat the people trading your capital.”
The payout record, and the 20× cap on the first two withdrawals
Velotrade publishes 60 payout certificates and, unusually, the Arbitrum transaction hash behind each one. We decoded every hash against a live Arbitrum RPC node rather than trusting the certificates. All 60 resolve to confirmed on-chain stablecoin transfers — 57 in USDT, three in USDC — from four Velotrade-controlled addresses to 59 distinct wallets between 3 June and 28 August 2026. None was missing, altered or duplicated: a real step above the editable screenshots most firms offer.
The numbers behind the proof are far smaller than the marketing implies. The 60 transfers total $38,643; the largest is $4,070, the smallest $109, the median $395.50. Velotrade calls the set “examples, not a complete record”, so the true total may be higher — but this is the entire verifiable record the firm puts forward, against a homepage promising $200,000 accounts and $2.5bn in payments.
What we could not verify: the pass rate, the number of funded accounts, the share of payout requests approved, and whether any payout has ever been declined. Trustpilot returned HTTP 403 to every request, so we could not sample its review volume or recency. No independent payout-dispute record exists yet, which reflects the firm’s age rather than good conduct. For a firm under a year old, the useful comparison is HyroTrader’s longer crypto track record.
The 20× payout cap, and what “no ceiling” means
The challenges page markets the 90% split with the line “No ceiling on earnings — payout is based on performance.” Clause 5.4(f) of the terms says otherwise. It reads: “The first and second Payouts are subject to a cap of twenty (20) times the Fee paid for the applicable Challenge (the ‘Payout Cap’). Any balance exceeding the Payout Cap is forfeited.” The same clause requires that “all Payouts are full withdrawals” and that “partial withdrawals are not permitted”.
Together those sentences are the catch: surplus cannot be left in the account for next week, because every payout must clear the whole balance, and anything above the cap is forfeited rather than rolled over. On the fees derived from the payout table, first-payout ceilings are $800 on a $5,000 account, $1,480 on $10,000, $3,300 on $25,000 and $6,100 on $50,000 — 20%, 18.5%, 16.5% and 15.25% gross at the 80% split, so the cap tightens as a percentage of capital as accounts grow. The $100,000 and $200,000 fees are not server-rendered, so those two ceilings could not be calculated.
The cap has probably not yet bitten. The highest return-on-cost in the published record is 18.05× the fee — a $722 payout on a $40 challenge, $78 short of forfeiture — and none of the 60 verified payouts reaches 20×. The trader who runs a $50,000 account hard for a fortnight finds the clause the expensive way. Anyone who followed PipFarm’s $5,000 hard cap and TradeFundrr’s lifetime payout ceiling knows the pattern: the ceiling lives in the contract, not the pricing table.
The rules that actually fail traders
The promise of static drawdown that “never moves, not intraday, not end-of-day, not ever” is accurate for the maximum drawdown, and the rules page confirms the old trailing high-water-mark model is retired. Three qualifications matter.
First, the daily limit is not static. In the firm’s own worked example, a $5,000 PRO 1-Step account has a static floor of $4,850 and a day-one daily floor of the same $4,850. But the daily floor recalculates from balance each day at 00:30 UTC, so after a profitable session at $5,200 it rises to $5,044, sitting $194 above the static floor. Whenever the account is in profit the daily limit binds first, and the static buffer is unreachable.
Second, financing costs eat the PRO buffer. Crypto carries a 0.05% overnight swap and 0.03% commission on notional. A $5,000 PRO account has $150 of drawdown room; at 5× funded leverage a full-size position costs $12.50 a night, so a three-night weekend hold spends a quarter of it before the market moves. Ment Funding’s 6% static drawdown gives twice the room.
Third, the terms override the rules. Where the terms conflict with the rules or FAQs, clause 1 says “these Terms shall prevail”. Clause 8.1(c) then refers to “maximum drawdown limits (trailing or static, as applicable)”, preserving a trailing model the rules page calls retired. Clause 8.2(i) bans “news trading abuse” where the marketing allows news trading “without restriction”, and clause 8.4 reserves “sole discretion to determine what constitutes Prohibited Trading”. Clause 5.3(b) is blunter: “An offer of a Funded Account is not guaranteed, regardless of Evaluation performance.”
How Velotrade compares
| Metric | Velotrade PRO 1-Step | HyroTrader | Crypto Fund Trader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Max simulated capital | $200,000 | $200,000 | $300,000 |
| Maximum drawdown | 3% static | 5% of balance | Not published on homepage |
| Daily loss limit | 3% | Not published on homepage | Not published on homepage |
| Profit target | 10% | Set per challenge | Set per challenge |
| Profit split | 80%, 90% paid add-on | 80%, scaling to 90% | Performance-based rewards |
| Max crypto leverage | 6× challenge, 5× funded (BTC/ETH/SOL); 2× most alts | Bybit USDT perpetuals | Up to 1:100 |
| Payout cap | 20× fee on first two payouts | None published | None published |
| Verifiable payout proof | 60 tx hashes, all 60 confirmed, $38,643 | 210 public reviews, no hashes | “$20,820,492 paid”, no hashes |
Velotrade calls its crypto conditions “the highest leverage in the evaluation model”, yet 6× on Bitcoin and 2× on most altcoins is conservative next to Crypto Fund Trader’s advertised 1:100 or the perpetuals leverage in HyroTrader’s Bybit routing, as our Crypto Fund Trader review sets out.
Regulatory posture
Velotrade Re Limited is not regulated, and says so. Its footer states the company “does not act as a financial broker, advisor, or fiduciary, nor does it accept client funds. It does not engage in any regulated financial activities; its sole business activity is the provision of simulated trading.” The SFC Type 1 licence belongs to Velotrade Management Limited and confers nothing on the prop firm or its traders.
Everything is simulated. Clause 5.3(d) states that “Funded Accounts are simulated trading accounts; you will not trade with real capital”, which sits awkwardly beside the homepage offer of “up to $200,000 of our capital”. Execution runs on DXtrade on a demo feed, not exchange order books. Disputes go to Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre arbitration under a class-action waiver, liability capped at twelve months of fees — standard for the sector, and why the regulatory perimeter around prop firms stays the live question for anyone paying a challenge fee.
FAQ
Is Velotrade the same company as the Hong Kong invoice-finance platform? No. The prop firm is Velotrade Re Limited, incorporated November 2025. The invoice-finance business is Velotrade Management Limited, founded 2016 and SFC-licensed since 2018. They share founders and a brand, not a legal entity or a licence.
Are Velotrade’s payouts real? Yes, on the evidence available. We independently confirmed all 60 published Arbitrum transaction hashes as real stablecoin transfers to 59 distinct wallets between June and August 2026, totalling $38,643. Velotrade calls the set a sample rather than a complete record.
What is the payout cap? The first and second payouts are limited to 20 times the challenge fee, and any balance above that is forfeited rather than carried over, because every payout must clear the full balance. From the third payout onward there is no cap.
Is the drawdown really static? The maximum drawdown is. The daily loss limit is not: it recalculates from balance at 00:30 UTC each day, so once an account is in profit the daily floor sits above the static floor and becomes the binding constraint.
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.
Abdelaziz Fathi
Abdelaziz Fathi covers the intersection of forex/CFD brokerage, regulation, liquidity, fintech, and digital assets. With a B.A. in Finance and hands-on industry exposure, Aziz blends analytical rigor with clear storytelling to make complex market structure understandable for traders, brokers, and fintech professionals.
