TL;DR: Velotrade is a Hong Kong prop firm run by Velotrade Re Limited, a company the firm says it incorporated in November 2025. Its founders also run Velotrade Management Limited, an invoice-finance business started in 2016, which is where the older “Velotrade Hong Kong” name comes from. The prop firm opened for sales on March 15, 2026. It sells three one-time challenges on DXtrade: CLASSIC 2-Step, CLASSIC 1-Step and PRO 1-Step, from $5,000 to $200,000, covering 234 crypto, forex, stock, index and commodity symbols on one account. On October 11, 2026 list prices ran from $40 (PRO $5K) to $1,114 (PRO $200K), and the firm’s own code AITRADE20 took 20% off every size. Every plan uses a static maximum drawdown (10%, 7% or 3%), a daily loss limit, a 10% target and five “qualifying” days of at least 0.8% realised profit. It has no consistency rule, allows news trading, weekend holds, bots and API trading, and pays 80% (90% with a paid add-on) in USDC or USDT. The catches: the first two payouts are capped at 20 times the fee you paid, every payout must withdraw the whole balance, fees are never refunded, and the terms say a funded account is not guaranteed even after you pass. Trustpilot hides Velotrade’s rating for a guidelines breach and shows 8 reviews, and we found no independent payout report on Reddit.
Research status: We checked this review on October 11, 2026 against Velotrade’s own pages: the challenges, rules and how-it-works pages, the full FAQ, the payouts page, the instruments and DXtrade pages, the About page, the legacy trade-finance pages and the Terms and Conditions (last updated July 1, 2026). We read every price by account size from the firm’s live plan selector the same day, and checked archived copies of velotrade.com from January to March 2026 on the Wayback Machine. We read Trustpilot and Reddit on October 11, 2026. We did not buy a challenge or open an account, so anything that only appears after purchase is printed as Velotrade publishes it and was not verified by purchase.
Velotrade review verdict: is it legit?
Velotrade is a real, reachable business in the basic sense. It names its operating company (Velotrade Re Limited), gives a Hong Kong company number (79182891) and a registered office in Sheung Wan, names two founders with long banking careers, publishes detailed rules and terms, and announced its launch through a PR Newswire release dated March 13, 2026. The founders’ earlier company, Velotrade Management Limited, has run an invoice-finance platform in Hong Kong since 2016. We did not check the company number against the Hong Kong Companies Registry, so treat it as the firm’s own statement.
“Legit” and “a good fit” are different questions. These are the points that decide it:
- The prop firm is young. The name dates from 2016, but the prop business opened for sales on March 15, 2026. That gives it about seven months of trading history on the date we checked.
- Its rules are unusually plain. Static drawdown on every plan, no consistency rule, news trading, weekend holds, bots and API access all allowed, and no time limit. The full rule text is public.
- The payout terms have sharp edges. The first two payouts are capped at 20 times the fee you paid and any extra is forfeited, every payout must withdraw the whole balance, and a 14-day wait plus five qualifying days apply before the first one.
- Passing does not guarantee a funded account. The terms say a funded account is offered “at our sole discretion” and “is not guaranteed, regardless of Evaluation performance”.
- Payout evidence is firm-published. Velotrade posts 60 sample payouts with blockchain transaction links, which is more checkable than screenshots. We found no trader outside the firm describing a payout, and Trustpilot hides the firm’s rating after removing fake reviews.
Our read: Velotrade is a credible new firm with clear rules and a traceable payout method, but too new to have an independent payout record. It may suit a disciplined multi-asset or bot trader who starts small. A trader who needs years of third-party payout reports should wait.
Velotrade at a glance
| Item | What Velotrade publishes (checked October 11, 2026) |
|---|---|
| Operator | Velotrade Re Limited, Hong Kong, incorporated November 2025 (company number 79182891, per the firm) |
| Prop launch | Early-access waitlist in February 2026; grand opening with a working checkout on March 15, 2026 |
| Challenges | CLASSIC 2-Step ($5K to $100K), CLASSIC 1-Step ($5K to $100K), PRO 1-Step ($5K to $200K) |
| Price range | $40 to $1,114 one time at list price; 20% off with code AITRADE20 on the day we checked |
| Profit target | 10% (2-Step: 10% then 5%) |
| Daily loss limit | 5% (2-Step), 4% (CLASSIC 1-Step), 3% (PRO), reset at 00:30 UTC |
| Max drawdown | Static from the starting balance: 10%, 7% or 3% |
| Minimum days | 5 qualifying days per phase (realised profit of at least 0.8% of the starting balance each) |
| Consistency rule | None |
| Time limit | None |
| Profit split | 80%, or 90% with an add-on costing 20% more at checkout |
| Payouts | First after 14 days and 5 qualifying days, then weekly; $100 minimum; USDC or USDT |
| Platform | DXtrade only (web, desktop, mobile browser), REST and WebSocket API included |
| Markets | 104 crypto, 39 forex pairs, 77 stocks, 7 indices, 7 commodities on one account |
| Restricted countries | North Korea, Iran, Syria, Cuba, Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk and any sanctioned jurisdiction |
| Trustpilot | Rating hidden for a guidelines breach; 8 reviews (read October 11, 2026) |
Who runs Velotrade (Hong Kong, and the other Velotrade)
Two companies share the Velotrade name, and most confusion about “Velotrade HK” comes from mixing them up.
| Company | What it does | Where you see it |
|---|---|---|
| Velotrade Re Limited | Runs the prop trading business: challenges, funded accounts, payouts. Incorporated in Hong Kong in November 2025, per the firm. | velotrade.com, the Terms and Conditions, the trading portal |
| Velotrade Management Limited | The original Velotrade, founded in Hong Kong in 2016: invoice financing and trade finance for small and mid-sized exporters, plus an investor side. The firm says it has paid out more than $2.5 billion and still operates. | velotrade.com’s “legacy business” pages |
Velotrade’s About page and its launch release both say the two are separate legal entities with the same founders. Gianluca Pizzituti (Chief Executive Officer) started on the derivatives desk at Dresdner Kleinwort in London and later ran a high-frequency trading firm in Singapore. Vittorio De Angelis (Executive Chairman) traded equity derivatives at JP Morgan and Dresdner Kleinwort and was co-head of equity derivatives at Bank of America. The legacy pages also list a third co-founder, Emmanuel V. Pitsilis, as senior advisor.
The registered office in the terms is Unit 702, 7/F, Yue Thai Commercial Building, 128 Connaught Road Central, Sheung Wan, Hong Kong. Support is by email (support@velotrade.com), live chat and Discord. The FAQ says Velotrade holds no financial services licence because it runs simulated accounts and does not hold client funds.
A few searches for the Velotrade name belong to the trade-finance side, not the prop firm:
- Velotrade incoterms. The legacy blog publishes guides such as “Trade Finance And Incoterms” and “Incoterms 2020 Defined”. They explain shipping terms for exporters and have nothing to do with trading challenges.
- Velotrade Vietnam. The legacy About page says the business is “Headquartered in Hong Kong, Tech Hub in Vietnam”, and the old trade-finance site offered a Vietnamese language option. The prop firm does not publish a Vietnamese office or a Vietnam-specific product.
- Velotrade awards. The “Best SME Invoice Solution” award from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, which the prop firm’s FAQ cites, was won by the trade-finance business, not the prop firm.
From trade finance to prop firm: the timeline
| Date | What happened | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Velotrade founded in Hong Kong as an invoice-finance platform | About page; the legacy About page says “since 2017” |
| November 2025 | Velotrade Re Limited incorporated to run the prop business | About page, launch release |
| January 13, 2026 | velotrade.com still shows the trade-finance site | Wayback Machine copy |
| February 10, 2026 | “You are viewing Velotrade in early access … Join the waitlist”, with challenge prices shown | Wayback Machine copy |
| March 13, 2026 | PR Newswire release announces a crypto funded-trading platform | PR Newswire |
| March 15, 2026 | “GRAND OPENING” for the first 2,000 buyers: fail the evaluation and the retry is free. A $50K 2-step cost $540; minimum trading days were 4 per phase | Wayback Machine copy of /challenges |
| June 12, 2026 | Effective date on most current rule sections; the rules now say the trailing “High Water Mark model has been retired” and every plan uses a static floor | Rules page |
| August 22, 2026 | Current Minimum Trading Days rule (5 qualifying days of 0.8%) takes effect | Rules page |
| September 4, 2026 | Inactivity rule (one trade every 30 days) takes effect | Rules page |
The product began as a crypto prop firm and now markets itself as multi-asset, with forex, stocks, indices and commodities on the same account. Prices have dropped since launch: the $50K 2-step that cost $540 in March listed at $419 in October, before the discount code.
Pros and cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Static maximum drawdown on every plan: the floor never trails your profits | First two payouts capped at 20 times the fee you paid; anything above is forfeited |
| No consistency rule and no time limit | Every payout must withdraw the whole balance; no partial withdrawals |
| News trading, overnight and weekend holds allowed | Fees are non-refundable and challenges cannot be reset |
| Bots, EAs and REST/WebSocket API included on every account at no cost | Funded account offered at the firm’s discretion, “not guaranteed” |
| 234 symbols across five asset classes on one account | DXtrade only: no MetaTrader, no cTrader, no native app yet |
| Payouts in USDC or USDT with on-chain transaction links you can check | Only crypto payouts; no bank transfer |
| Detailed public rules with worked examples | About seven months of history; no independent payout reports found |
| Low entry price ($40, or $32 with the current code) | PRO’s 3% floor leaves very little room; an anti-gambling clause sits beside “no max risk per trade” |
Velotrade account types compared
All three plans share the same profit split, payout schedule, markets and trading permissions. They differ in phases, loss limits, sizes and price.
| Rule | CLASSIC 2-Step | CLASSIC 1-Step | PRO 1-Step |
|---|---|---|---|
| Phases | 2 (Phase 2 starts from a reset balance) | 1 | 1 |
| Profit target | 10% then 5% | 10% | 10% |
| Daily loss limit | 5% | 4% | 3% |
| Max drawdown (static) | 10% | 7% | 3% |
| Qualifying days | 5 per phase | 5 | 5 |
| Time limit | None | None | None |
| Sizes | $5K to $100K | $5K to $100K | $5K to $200K |
| List price range | $54 to $769 | $67 to $1,075 | $40 to $1,114 |
| Profit split | 80%, 90% with add-on | 80%, 90% with add-on | 80%, 90% with add-on |
The trade-off is simple. CLASSIC 2-Step is the cheapest way to get a wide floor (10%) but needs two phases. CLASSIC 1-Step skips a phase for a higher price and a 7% floor. PRO is cheapest per account dollar and the only route to $200K, but its 3% floor is the same size as its daily limit, so one bad day can end the account. A 10% target against 3% of loss room means PRO needs you to make more than three times what you are allowed to lose.
You can hold several challenges and funded accounts under one registered profile, but combined funded capital is capped at $200,000. Each account is judged separately: profits and losses cannot be combined across accounts.
Velotrade pricing by account size
We clicked through every account size on Velotrade’s plan selector on October 11, 2026. Each cell shows the list price, the price with the firm’s code AITRADE20 (20% off), and the total if you also add the 90% profit split, which the selector prices at 20% on top of the fee.
| Account size | CLASSIC 2-Step | CLASSIC 1-Step | PRO 1-Step |
|---|---|---|---|
| $5,000 | $54 / $43 / $52 | $67 / $54 / $64 | $40 / $32 / $38 |
| $10,000 | $100 / $80 / $96 | $127 / $102 / $122 | $74 / $59 / $71 |
| $25,000 | $225 / $180 / $216 | $290 / $232 / $278 | $165 / $132 / $158 |
| $50,000 | $419 / $335 / $402 | $543 / $434 / $522 | $305 / $244 / $293 |
| $100,000 | $769 / $615 / $738 | $1,075 / $860 / $1,032 | $558 / $446 / $536 |
| $200,000 | Not offered | Not offered | $1,114 / $891 / $1,070 |
Format: list price / with AITRADE20 / with AITRADE20 plus the 90% split add-on. All are one-time fees in US dollars. There is no monthly fee, no activation fee and no separate funded-account fee. The FAQ says “The challenge fee is the only payment you make”, but trading commissions and overnight funding are charged inside the account (see trading costs). Velotrade accepts cards and crypto.
Is the 90% add-on worth it? It pays back once your total payouts pass ten times the add-on cost. On a $50K CLASSIC 2-Step bought with the code, the add-on costs $67 ($402 minus $335). Ten extra percentage points of split repay $67 after $670 of profit split between you and the firm, which is about 1.3% of the account. Most traders who reach a payout at all will clear that.
What you pay per $1,000 of loss room
Account size is a marketing number. What you really buy is room to lose before the account closes. Dividing the fee by the static drawdown in dollars shows how differently the three plans price that room.
| Plan and size | Loss room (static) | List fee | Per $1,000 at list | Per $1,000 with AITRADE20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CLASSIC 2-Step $50K | $5,000 | $419 | $83.80 | $67.00 |
| CLASSIC 1-Step $50K | $3,500 | $543 | $155.14 | $124.00 |
| PRO 1-Step $50K | $1,500 | $305 | $203.33 | $162.67 |
| CLASSIC 2-Step $100K | $10,000 | $769 | $76.90 | $61.50 |
| CLASSIC 1-Step $100K | $7,000 | $1,075 | $153.57 | $122.86 |
| PRO 1-Step $100K | $3,000 | $558 | $186.00 | $148.67 |
| PRO 1-Step $200K | $6,000 | $1,114 | $185.67 | $148.50 |
PRO looks cheapest by account size and is the most expensive by loss room: at $50K it costs about 2.4 times as much per $1,000 of room as the CLASSIC 2-Step. The 2-Step’s figure also covers only Phase 1; Phase 2 restarts from the starting balance with a fresh 10% floor. Use the BestProps drawdown calculator to run the same numbers for your own size.
Discount codes, refunds, resets and free challenges
- Current code. On October 11, 2026, Velotrade’s site banner and checkout notice showed “20% off every challenge” with code AITRADE20, described as an “AI trading offer” for a “Limited time only”. The firm publishes no end date. Coupon sites list other codes we could not confirm with the firm.
- Codes and referral links do not stack. The FAQ says that if you arrive through a referral link, discount codes cannot be applied.
- A discount also lowers your payout cap. The first two payouts are capped at 20 times the fee you paid. Paying $335 instead of $419 for a $50K 2-Step lowers that cap from $8,380 to $6,700. See the worked payout example.
- No refunds. Fees are non-refundable once you have accessed the platform or placed a trade (terms 6.2). The FAQ answers “Does Velotrade offer refunds?” with “No.” There is no fee refund on passing either.
- No resets. A breached challenge cannot be reset. You buy a new one, with no limit on attempts.
- Activate within 30 days. An unused challenge can be suspended after 30 days. You can ask for reactivation within six months; after that it expires without a refund.
- Free challenge route. “Sprint Trading” at sprint.velotrade.com is a free Bitcoin up-or-down prediction game. Top leaderboard players win a challenge account. The FAQ says free or awarded challenges carry the same risk rules but a limited profit split and payout cap, and tells winners to check the details with the firm.
- Past offer. At the March 15, 2026 grand opening, the first 2,000 buyers got a free retry if they failed the evaluation. That offer is no longer on the challenges page.
Daily loss limit and static max drawdown
Velotrade uses two equity limits. Touch either one and the account is breached: all positions close and the account is disabled for good. Both are checked against live equity, so a floating loss counts without closing the trade.
| Plan | Daily loss limit | Maximum drawdown |
|---|---|---|
| CLASSIC 2-Step | Higher of balance or equity at 00:30 UTC × 0.95 | Starting balance × 0.90, fixed (recalculated once when Phase 2 starts) |
| CLASSIC 1-Step | Higher of balance or equity at 00:30 UTC × 0.96 | Starting balance × 0.93, fixed |
| PRO 1-Step | Higher of balance or equity at 00:30 UTC × 0.97 | Starting balance × 0.97, fixed |
Worked example (PRO, $50,000). The static floor is set once at $48,500 and never moves. Say you are up and, at 00:30 UTC, your balance is $51,200 with an open trade showing a $200 loss, so equity is $51,000. The daily limit uses the higher figure: $51,200 × 0.97 = $49,664. For the next 24 hours your equity must stay above $49,664, which is tighter than the $48,500 floor. Because the daily reference can include open profit, holding a winning trade through 00:30 UTC raises the next day’s limit too.
Two practical points follow. First, on PRO the daily limit and the overall floor are the same 3%, so on day one a single losing streak can hit both at once. Second, the floor is static, which helps once you are in profit: a $50K CLASSIC 2-Step that climbs to $54,000 has $9,000 of room above its $45,000 floor, where a trailing model would have moved the floor up. Our guide to static versus trailing drawdown explains the difference, and the daily loss limit calculator runs the daily figure.
There is no mandatory stop loss, no maximum lot size and no per-trade risk cap. Position size is limited by leverage and these two limits. The FAQ says the dashboard shows both limits and the dollar room left at all times.
Qualifying trading days (the 0.8% rule)
This is the rule most likely to slow a pass, and it is easy to misread as “five trading days”.
- A day counts only if you close trades with realised profit of at least 0.8% of the starting balance that day. Losing days and break-even days do not count.
- You need 5 qualifying days per phase. They do not need to be consecutive.
- Hitting the target early does not pass the phase. You keep trading until you have five qualifying days.
- Holding a position overnight adds nothing. A trade opened Monday and closed Wednesday counts as one day at most, and only if it closes with at least 0.8%.
- The count starts again at zero on the funded account, and you need five more before the first payout only.
| Account size | 0.8% per qualifying day | Minimum across 5 days |
|---|---|---|
| $5,000 | $40 | $200 |
| $25,000 | $200 | $1,000 |
| $50,000 | $400 | $2,000 |
| $100,000 | $800 | $4,000 |
| $200,000 | $1,600 | $8,000 |
The rule has no cap on profit from a single day, so it is not a consistency rule. It does mean a trader who makes the whole 10% in one big trade still needs four more winning days of at least 0.8% each. At launch in March 2026 the requirement was four minimum trading days per phase; the current 0.8% wording took effect on August 22, 2026.
News, weekends, bots, hedging and other rules
| Topic | Velotrade rule (checked October 11, 2026) |
|---|---|
| News trading | Allowed on all instruments, including FOMC, NFP and CPI. The terms still ban “news trading abuse” designed to exploit platform limitations. |
| Overnight and weekend holding | Allowed. Funding fees apply (below). Single stocks have tighter rules. |
| EAs, bots, AI and API | Allowed on every challenge and funded account, free, no approval. REST and WebSocket only; no FIX. Bots that breach a limit are closed like a manual trader. |
| Banned strategies | High-frequency trading, latency or price-feed arbitrage, tick scalping, grid trading, martingale, exploiting platform errors, account rolling |
| Hedging | Allowed inside one account. Banned across Velotrade accounts, across other prop firms and across platforms. A first single-trade offence is a soft breach (once per user); anything else is a hard breach. |
| Copy trading | Only between accounts you own. Public signal services and off-the-shelf EAs are allowed; private or invitation-only signal groups are not. |
| Accounts per person | One registered profile (one identity). Several challenges allowed, combined funded capital up to $200,000. |
| VPN and VPS | Allowed. Letting anyone else trade your account is banned. |
| Inactivity | At least one trade held 60 seconds or more every 30 days, or the account is deactivated. Ask for reactivation within six months or it may be treated as a hard breach. Pending orders do not count. |
| Single stocks | Close positions 24 hours before earnings and before the ex-dividend date; close before announced corporate actions; per-company and total exposure limits |
| Over-sizing | “No max risk per trade”, but the terms also ban “Placing excessively large positions relative to account size without risk management”, and the rules list overleveraging and overexposure as risk-abusive behaviour |
The last row matters more than it looks. The marketing says you can “Risk as much of your account as you want on a single position”. The only public breach dispute we found (see complaints) was a gold position the CEO said used about 95% of a $25,000 account’s equity as margin, which Velotrade treated under its anti-gambling rule after a warning. Read “no max risk per trade” as “no fixed number”, not “no limit”.
Commissions and overnight funding fees
| Cost | Crypto, indices, stocks | Commodities | Forex |
|---|---|---|---|
| Commission per side | 0.03% of notional | 0.01% of notional | 0.004% of notional |
| Overnight funding | 0.05% of notional for positions open at 00:30 UTC, every day including weekends | Same as crypto | 0.05% at the 21:00 UTC rollover Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri; 0.15% on Wednesday |
| Spread | Raw bid and offer with no markup, per the firm | ||
These come out of your account balance, so they count toward drawdown. Example: a $20,000 notional BTC position held for three nights costs $6 to open, $6 to close and $10 a night in funding, $42 in all. On a $5K PRO account that is 28% of the $150 total loss room before price moves at all. Larger accounts absorb it easily; small, tight accounts that hold leveraged crypto for days do not.
Velotrade payouts
| Payout term | What Velotrade publishes |
|---|---|
| Profit split | 80% from the first payout; 90% if you bought the add-on. No scaling to a higher split over time. |
| First payout | 14 calendar days after your first funded trade, and after 5 qualifying days on the funded account |
| Later payouts | Weekly, on request |
| Minimum | $100 |
| How much | Full withdrawal of the available balance every time; partial withdrawals are not allowed |
| Payout cap | First and second payouts capped at 20 times the challenge fee you paid; “Any balance exceeding the Payout Cap is forfeited.” No cap from the third payout |
| After a payout | Balance resets to the starting balance; the static floor stays where it was |
| Method | USDC or USDT to your wallet, sent on Arbitrum; network fees come out of the amount |
| Processing | Account halted during a risk review; processed within 24 hours of approval, longer at busy times |
| Who can be refused | Payouts can be withheld or declined over suspected rule breaches, prohibited trading or fraud (terms 5.4) |
Payout proof. Velotrade’s payouts page lists 60 sample payouts, the newest dated October 9, 2026, each with a link to the transaction on Arbiscan. The largest in the 30 days before our check was $6,380 on a $200K account (September 18, 2026), and the 12 newest ranged from $134 on a $5K account to $2,080 on a $50K account. An on-chain link proves that a transfer left a wallet; it does not tell you who received it. These are payouts the firm chose to publish, not a complete record. There is no published scaling plan.
A first payout, worked through
Take a $50,000 CLASSIC 2-Step bought with AITRADE20 for $335, at the standard 80% split.
- You pass both phases (10%, then 5%, each with five qualifying days), complete KYC and accept the funded account.
- Your first funded trade starts the 14-day clock. In that time you need five days that each close at least $400 in realised profit.
- On day 15 the account stands at $59,000, so profit is $9,000. You must withdraw all of it.
- Your 80% share is $7,200. The cap for the first payout is 20 × $335 = $6,700.
- If the cap applies to your share, you receive $6,700 and $500 is forfeited. The terms do not say whether the cap is measured before or after the split, so ask Velotrade in writing before you trade for a large first payout.
- The balance resets to $50,000 and the floor stays at $45,000. The second payout has the same $6,700 cap; from the third, there is none.
The same profit at list price ($419 fee) would sit under an $8,380 cap and pay the full $7,200. A smaller first withdrawal, for example $3,000 of profit and a $2,400 share, is not affected by the cap at all. The cap only bites when early profits are large relative to what you paid, which is exactly what a $32 or $43 discounted account invites. The payout readiness checklist is a useful way to record your dates, qualifying days and cap before you request.
Simulated accounts, KYC and the funded offer
Every Velotrade account is simulated. The terms say “All trading occurs in a simulated environment using d