A Crypto Prop Firm on a Real Exchange: Funding Rates, Liquidation vs Drawdown, Weekends

A crypto prop firm gives you an evaluation on cryptocurrency markets instead of forex, and the question that decides everything else is where it runs. At Dolvero it runs inside Bybit: you connect a Bybit demo account to your dashboard with an API key and trade the exchange's own environment, more than 700 pairs, leverage up to 50x, quoted around the clock. That brings in three mechanics a forex trader has never priced: funding rates that move your equity three times a day, an exchange liquidation price sitting behind your drawdown floor, and a market that never closes even though your account rules do.

Pairs

700+Bybit universe, spot and perpetuals

Leverage

up to 50xon the evaluation

Market hours

24/7including the weekend

Daily loss, 2-Step

4%measured on equity

Maximum drawdown

6%static on 2-Step, trailing on 1-Step

Profit split

80%no add-ons on crypto

What "on Bybit" means in practice

Crypto at a CFD prop firm is a contract for difference on the firm's own broker feed, traded next to gold and indices in MetaTrader, with the symbol list, leverage and trading hours the firm chose. Crypto at Dolvero is an account inside Bybit, driven by an API key, with the exchange's instrument universe, margin engine, funding timestamps and liquidation logic.

Be precise about one thing: the evaluation account is a Bybit demo account, so it is a simulation, like every prop firm evaluation on every platform. Bybit states that a demo account "accurately simulate[s] price movements on Mainnet", while "order execution doesn't impact the order book or price movements since executed orders don't enter the actual order book". You get the live market's prices, symbols, funding and liquidation rules, and the exchange's real book is left alone.

Weekend quoting is worth one verified note, because "crypto trades 24/7" is repeated more often than it is checked. FTMO's own symbols page carries this caveat: "Weekend trading hours on Cryptocurrencies may vary on each platform due to weekly scheduled maintenance times." On a broker feed the weekend is a maintenance question; on an exchange it is not.

The parameters, side by side

Two crypto models, both with no time limit on any phase, both measured on equity so an open position counts while it is open.

A qualifying day is one that closes at least 0.5% of the starting balance in realised profit, so five sessions of small green closes count and five days of clicking around do not. Neither crypto model has a consistency rule or an inactivity rule. List prices for the crypto 2-Step run from $19 on a $3,000 account to $549 for $100,000 and $999 for $200,000; the crypto 1-Step from $69 for $5,000 to $689 for $100,000. The whole fee comes back with your second payout.

Funding rates, and what one payment costs

A perpetual futures contract has no expiry, so something has to keep it anchored to spot. That something is funding, which Bybit describes as "a mechanism designed to keep the price of Bybit Perpetual Contracts closely aligned with the global spot price". Three facts decide whether it ever matters to your evaluation:

1. It is exchanged between traders. Bybit's help center states that funding fees "are exchanged directly between long and short position holders at each funding time". When the rate is positive, longs pay shorts. When it is negative, shorts pay longs.
2. It is a snapshot, not a rental. "Traders will only pay or receive funding fees if they hold positions at the funding time. If a position is fully closed before the funding time, no funding fee will be charged or received." Seven hours and fifty minutes across no timestamp costs nothing.
3. The interval is per contract. Bybit's example of an eight hour interval settles at 12AM UTC, 8AM UTC and 4PM UTC. If a contract's funding rate hits its preset limit at settlement, the exchange switches that contract to hourly settlement, so check the interval on the contract you trade rather than assuming eight hours.

The published formula is short: funding fee = position value x funding rate, where position value = contract quantity x mark price. Bybit's own example uses 10 BTC contracts at a mark price of 8,000 USDT and a rate of 0.01%, giving 80,000 USDT of position value and 8 USDT paid by the long to the short.

Put that into a crypto 2-Step on a $10,000 account, where the daily loss limit is $400 and the total room to the floor is $600. Assume a long of 0.5 BTC with the mark price at 60,000 USDT, a position value of 30,000 USDT, and a rate of 0.01%.

At a typical rate, funding is a rounding error against a 6% floor. On a crowded contract at an extreme rate it is not, and the number that counts is the one on that contract. Two details from Bybit's page are worth keeping. The fee comes out of available balance, and if that balance is short, "the funding fee will be deducted from the position's initial margin. The liquidation price will move closer to the mark price, and liquidation risk may increase (applicable to Isolated Margin mode only)". And opening or closing within five seconds of the timestamp does not guarantee which side of the cycle you land on.

Liquidation price against the drawdown floor

New crypto traders often treat the exchange's liquidation price as the real backstop and the prop firm's floor as paperwork. On a crypto evaluation the order is the other way round, and it can be shown exactly.

Bybit's isolated margin liquidation price for a USDT perpetual long is: [(entry price x position size) minus (entry price x position size divided by leverage) minus (extra margin added divided by (1 minus taker fee rate)) minus MM deduction] divided by [position size minus (position size x MM rate)]. Take a $10,000 crypto 2-Step and a long of 0.1 BTC at 100,000 USDT: 10,000 USDT of position value at 10x, 1,000 USDT of initial margin, no extra margin, and the values from Bybit's own example, a maintenance margin rate of 0.5% and a lowest tier MM deduction of zero. The liquidation price is (10,000 minus 1,000) divided by (0.1 minus 0.0005), which is 90,452 USDT, about 9.55% below entry and a loss of roughly 955 USDT.

The account is finished 3,548 points of BTC before the exchange takes any interest in the position, and that gap is not an accident of these particular numbers. At 10x on the lowest risk limit tier, liquidation costs about 9.55% of position value, which stays under the $600 floor only while position value stays under roughly $6,280. Trade smaller than that and liquidation can arrive first; trade anything larger, which almost everyone does, and the floor is the binding constraint. Three consequences follow:

• Leverage does not change your loss limit, only how fast you reach it. At 50x the same $400 is a 0.8% move on a $50,000 position instead of a 4% move on a $10,000 one.
• Liquidation is triggered on Bybit's mark price, not the last traded price, so it is not the level your candles show by default. Your own stop, placed inside the floor, is the only level under your control.
• On the crypto 1-Step the 6% floor trails your best equity, so a new high moves the floor up and hands back none of the room. Our drawdown guide works through the trailing case in full.

Weekends: the market is open, your account is not

Bybit quotes at the weekend and funding keeps settling through it. The Dolvero weekend rule applies to crypto anyway: every position closed before the Friday market close, nothing open at any point on Saturday or Sunday, including pairs that are still quoting. The Weekend Holding add-on exists on the CFD side and is not sold on crypto, so here the rule is not optional.

That is a restriction, and the reason it exists is worth stating rather than hiding. A position carried into Sunday sits in the thinnest liquidity of the week, with funding settling three more times, on an account whose entire life is 6% wide. In the Dolvero enforcement record, weekend holding appears in 3.8% of accounts with a breach against 75.4% for the daily loss limit: it is not what ends most accounts, but it is the one exposure a trader takes on while not watching.

Bots, funding farming and the rules that still bite

Automation on crypto needs no permission at Dolvero: no review queue, no approval form, no size threshold above which bots stop being allowed. On the CFD side an expert advisor goes through a review of 24 to 48 hours; on Bybit you connect your key and run your code. From the official pages checked for our rules comparison: FundedNext prohibits expert advisors on accounts of $50,000 and above, FundingPips and Alpha Capital Group limit third party automation to risk management tools, and Maven Trading does not permit them at all.

What stays prohibited is the list that applies to every Dolvero account, plus one crypto specific entry: funding rate farming. The reason is mechanical rather than moral. Harvesting a funding stream means holding offsetting exposure so the position collects payments without directional risk, which is hedging under another name and produces trading days with no trading in them. The same logic covers copied signals, coordinated strategies across several Dolvero accounts including your own, latency and statistical arbitrage, martingale and grid layering, and one sided betting.

Connecting the API key

1. Buy the crypto evaluation. Pick the crypto 2-Step or crypto 1-Step and the account size. No identity document is needed to buy or to trade; verification happens once, before your first payout.
2. Open Bybit demo trading. Demo is available to every Bybit user without a separate account and sits under the profile icon on the website. It runs in Unified Trading Account mode, which is what the evaluation expects.
3. Create the API key. API keys can only be created on the Bybit website, not in the app, and Bybit notes that for new users key creation "may be restricted for the first 48 hours after registration for risk control purposes". Register before the day you plan to start.
4. Give it trading permission only. The key needs to read your positions and place orders, nothing beyond that.
5. Paste the key and secret into your Dolvero dashboard. It then reads equity, open positions and closed trades from Bybit and shows the daily limit, the floor and your distance to both in dollars, the same way it does on the CFD side.
6. Trade the five qualifying days. A day counts once it closes at least 0.5% of the starting balance in profit, and there is no time limit.

Where Dolvero stands out

News window on crypto

Nonehigh impact releases are unrestricted

Bot approval

Not requiredconnect the key and run it

Consistency rule

Noneand no inactivity rule

Time limit

Noneon either crypto model

Payout cycle

14 daysthen every 14 days

Released to provider

2.1 haverage across 195 payouts, 100% inside 24 h

Funded crypto accounts sit in the same payout machinery as everything else: a flat 1% fee, a $100 minimum, bank transfer, PayPal, Wise or USDT, and every payout listed in the public ledger with a verification code. Scaling adds 25% every three months of consistent profit up to $200,000, and rules are locked for your account from the day it starts.

Frequently asked questions

What is a crypto prop firm?

A firm that runs an evaluation on cryptocurrency markets and funds the traders who pass, splitting the profit with them. What differs between firms is the platform, the rules and the split. At Dolvero the evaluation runs on a Bybit demo account connected by API key: 700+ pairs, leverage up to 50x, 80% split.

How does the funding rate affect my evaluation?

Funding is exchanged between longs and shorts at each timestamp, typically every eight hours, and only if you hold the position at that moment. It is position value multiplied by the funding rate, so a 30,000 USDT position at 0.01% pays or receives 3 USDT. Funding paid reduces equity, which is what both limits are measured on.

Can I get liquidated on Bybit before I breach a Dolvero rule?

Only on a very small position. At 10x on the lowest risk limit tier, liquidation costs around 9.55% of position value, so it lands inside the $600 floor of a $10,000 account only while position value stays under roughly $6,280. On any larger size the 4% daily limit and the 6% floor come first.

Can I hold a crypto position over the weekend?

No. Every position must be closed before the Friday market close and nothing may be open on Saturday or Sunday, even though the pairs keep quoting. The Weekend Holding add-on covers CFD accounts only, so on crypto the rule applies without exception.

Are trading bots allowed on the crypto challenge?

Yes, with no approval step. Expert advisors on MT5 need a review of 24 to 48 hours; crypto bots do not. Every account rule still applies to whatever your code does, and funding rate farming stays prohibited.

What does a crypto evaluation cost?

List prices for the crypto 2-Step run from $19 for a $3,000 account to $549 for $100,000 and $999 for $200,000, and the crypto 1-Step from $69 for $5,000 to $689 for $100,000. The full fee is refunded with your second payout, and crypto carries no add-ons, so the list price is the whole price.