Crypto Prop Evaluation: A Practical Preparation Checklist

No checklist makes an evaluation likely to pass, and anyone publishing pass-rate statistics for “most traders” is generally inventing them. What a checklist can do is remove the avoidable failures — the ones caused by not knowing your own recorded limits, by sizing without checking remaining allowance, or by placing a stop that cannot fire. This is that checklist.

Before you place the first order

• Write down the four numbers recorded for your purchase: profit target, maximum daily loss, maximum total drawdown and leverage. They are shown in the Builder before purchase and in your account after activation; this page does not prescribe universal values.
• Convert the total drawdown percentage into an absolute equity floor and keep it visible. It is static — set from the initial balance and it does not move.
• Note the reset time. Your trading day begins and ends at 02:00 Europe/Zurich, and the daily allowance is fixed at that reset.
• Confirm your stop-loss workflow. A stop is required on every position, and on leveraged configurations it may sit no further than 90% of the venue-derived liquidation distance.

Sizing against what is left, not what you started with

The allowance that matters when you size a trade is the one remaining right now. At ZoneX the daily figure is measured on committed risk: losses already realized today, plus the worst case still open on your book if every stop-loss were hit, plus applicable trading and funding costs. The allowance itself does not trail your equity — but what you have committed against it changes with every open position.

Overlapping exposure is one position

Three long positions in highly correlated majors are, for risk purposes, close to one larger long. Sum the worst case across everything open before adding anything, and treat correlated entries as a single commitment against the allowance.

Where the total drawdown floor bites

A static floor is generous when you are in profit and unforgiving early. On day one the entire distance between your initial balance and the floor is all the room you have; a poor first week can remove most of it before the method has had a chance to work. Size the opening phase accordingly.

Operational mistakes that end accounts

Use the absence of a deadline

There is no minimum number of trading days and no completion deadline for an activated ZoneX Challenge. Waiting for your setup is free; forcing a trade is not. This is one of the few structural advantages a trader can actually use.

What this checklist cannot do