The Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), the world’s largest financial derivatives exchange, halted trading for about 10 hours from Thursday into Friday, causing an outcry from traders before service was restored.
Trading halted due to a “cooling issue” at the CyrusOne data center in Illinois, a US state, according to an announcement from the CME. Trading was fully restored, and trading for all markets resumed at 1:30 pm UTC on Friday, the CME said in an update.
Meanwhile, traders voiced their discontent with the critical failure, which locked some users in their positions, prevented others from placing new trades, and halted price discovery.
Stock trader Timothy Bozman accused the CME of market manipulation and asked how “a simple issue could take down CME’s entire futures platform?”
“Very convenient that this happens in Asia on Thanksgiving Day, when there’s already low volume. Sounds like you’re trying to manipulate the markets quickly in a certain direction,” another X user said.
The backlash from traders continued even after the issue was fixed, with many saying that trading halted minutes before silver futures contracts hit an all-time high of $54, further fueling speculations.
Bitcoin futures contracts continue to climb after market halt
The CME does not publish regular trading data for Thanksgiving Day, which occurred on Thursday this year. However, Bitcoin futures contracts closed on Wednesday at $90,355 and opened at $90,940 on Friday, according to data from TradingView.
Bitcoin futures prices continued to climb on Friday, rising to over $93,000 at the time of this writing, as BTC rebounds from the local bottom of $80,522.
Bitcoin futures rebound from the recent low. Source: TradingView
Analysts say BTC faces resistance at $95,000, but if the cryptocurrency can reclaim $95,000 as support, it could bounce back into the $100,000 territory.
The recent dip to just over $80,000 marked the market’s lowest point, according to investor and analyst Arthur Hayes, who said that easing liquidity conditions will take BTC to higher levels in 2026, warning that another short-term drop might also occur in the meantime.
This week, cryptocurrency markets staged a long-awaited recovery, following four consecutive weeks of downside momentum.
Bitcoin’s (BTC) price reclaimed the $90,000 psychological mark on Wednesday, bringing some much-needed relief for Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) holders, who were once again back in profit as BTC traded above the key $89,600 flow-weighted cost basis of ETF buyers.
Bolstering investor sentiment, Cathie Wood, the CEO and chief investment officer of ARK Invest, said the company’s $1.5 million Bitcoin bull market price prediction remained unchanged, pointing to billions in returning liquidity following the end of the US government shutdown.
The crypto market recovery followed a sharp increase in expectations of interest rate cuts in the US, with odds rising by 46% in a week. Markets are pricing in an 85% chance of a 25 basis point interest rate cut at the US Federal Reserve’s Dec. 10 meeting, up from 39% a week before, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch tool.
However, Bitcoin is still facing the worst November in seven years, as the world’s first cryptocurrency is down about 17% on the monthly chart, despite the month averaging 41% historic Bitcoin returns, according to blockchain data provider CoinGlass.
Cathie Wood says ARK’s $1.5 million Bitcoin bull price hasn’t changed as markets eye rally
Equities and cryptocurrency markets may be setting up for a year-end reversal as liquidity improves and US monetary policy turns more supportive following the end of the record government shutdown.
Improving market conditions will be driven by the increasing liquidity, which has already returned $70 billion into markets since the end of the US government shutdown, with another $300 billion expected to return over the next five to six weeks as the Treasury General Account normalizes, according to investment management company ARK Invest.
Another potential catalyst will arrive on Dec. 1, when the US Federal Reserve is scheduled to end its quantitative tightening program and pivot toward quantitative easing, a shift that involves bond-buying to lower borrowing costs and stimulate economic activity.
“With liquidity returning, quantitative tightening (QT) ending December 1st, and monetary policy turning supportive, we believe conditions are building for markets to potentially reverse recent drawdowns,” wrote Ark in a Wednesday X post.
The current “liquidity squeeze” limiting the upside of the cryptocurrency and artificial intelligence markets is set to “reverse in the next few weeks,” wrote Cathie Wood, the CEO and chief investment officer of ARK Invest, in a Thursday X post.
Earlier in April, ARK Invest predicted a 2030 Bitcoin (BTC) price target of $1.5 million in the company’s “bull case,” and a $300,000 price target in the “bear case.”
Bitcoin price target for 2030. Source: Ark-invest.com
Despite the recent crypto market correction and stablecoins subtracting from Bitcoin’s role as a safe-haven asset, the bullish price target remains unchanged.
“The stablecoins have accelerated, taking some of the role away from Bitcoin that we expected,” but the “gold price appreciation has been far greater than we expected,” explained Wood during a webinar on Monday, adding:
“So net, our bull price, which most people focus on, really hasn’t changed.”
Webinar by Cathie Wood, the CEO and chief investment officer of ARK Invest. Source: Ark-funds.com
UK takes “meaningful step forward” with proposed DeFi tax overhaul
The UK has floated a new tax framework that eases the burden on decentralized finance (DeFi) users, with deferred capital gains taxes on crypto lending and liquidity pool users until the underlying token is sold, which the local industry has welcomed.
HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) proposed on Wednesday a “no gain, no loss” approach to DeFi that would cover lending out a token and receiving the same type back, borrowing arrangements and moving tokens into a liquidity pool.
Taxable gains or losses would be calculated when liquidity tokens are redeemed, based on the number of tokens a user receives back compared to the number they originally contributed, according to the proposal.
Currently, when a user deposits funds into a protocol, regardless of the reason, the move may be subject to capital gains tax. In the UK, capital gains tax rates can vary from 18% and 32%, depending on the action.
Tax framework a “positive signal” for UK crypto regulation
Sian Morton, marketing lead at the crosschain payments system Relay protocol, said HMRC’s no gain, no loss approach is a “meaningful step forward for UK DeFi users who borrow stablecoins against their crypto collateral, and moves tax treatment closer to the actual economic reality of these interactions.”
“A positive signal for the UK’s evolving stance on crypto regulation,” she added.
Maria Riivari, a lawyer at the DeFi platform Aave, said the change “would bring clarity that DeFi transactions do not trigger tax until you truly sell your tokens.”
“Other countries facing similar questions may want to take note of HMRC’s approach and the depth of research and consideration behind it,” she added.
DWF Labs launches $75 million fund for “institutional phase” of DeFi
Crypto market maker and Web3 investment firm DWF Labs says it is investing up to $75 million in decentralized finance projects that could support institutional adoption.
The company shared its announcement via X on Wednesday, saying the fund will support projects with “innovative value” propositions that can scale to support large-scale adoption.
“The initiative will target blockchain projects building dark-pool perpetual DEXs, decentralized money markets, and fixed-income or yield-bearing asset products, […] areas the firm believes are poised for major growth as crypto liquidity continues its structural migration onchain,” DWF Labs said.
“DeFi is entering its institutional phase,” he said, adding: “We’re seeing real demand for infrastructure that can handle size, protect order flow, and generate sustainable yield.”
The fund will focus on projects built across Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain and Solana, as well as Coinbase’s Ethereum layer-2 Base.
Alongside capital injections, DWF Labs will also offer support in ways such as “TVL and crypto liquidity provisioning, hands-on go-to-market strategy and execution support,” access to partnered exchanges, market makers, infrastructure providers and institutions in crypto.
Balancer community proposes plan to distribute funds recovered from hack
Two members of the Balancer protocol community submitted a proposal on Thursday outlining a distribution plan for a portion of the funds recovered from the protocol’s $116 million November exploit.
About $28 million from the $116 million heist was recovered by white hat hackers, internal rescuers and StakeWise — an Ether (ETH) liquid staking platform.
However, the proposal covers only the $8 million recovered by white hat hackers and internal rescue teams, while the nearly $20 million retrieved by StakeWise will be distributed separately to its users.
Balancer community proposal to distribute recovered funds. Source: Balancer
The authors proposed that all reimbursements should be non-socialized, meaning that funds would be distributed only to the specific liquidity pools that lost the funds and paid out on a pro-rata basis according to each holder’s share in the liquidity pool, represented by Balancer Pool Tokens (BPT).
Reimbursements should also be paid in-kind, with victims of the hack receiving payment denominated in the tokens they lost to avoid price mismatches between different digital assets, according to the authors.
The Balancer hack was one of the “most sophisticated” attacks in 2025, according to Deddy Lavid, the CEO of blockchain cybersecurity company Cyvers, highlighting the need for crypto user safety as security threats continue to evolve.
Nasdaq-listed Enlivex plans $212 million RAIN token play with ex-Italian PM onboard
A Nasdaq-listed biotech firm is raising $212 million in a late-cycle pivot into crypto, planning to buy the token of a decentralized prediction market even as other digital-asset treasuries (DATs) struggle to stay afloat.
Enlivex Therapeutics (ENLV), a clinical-stage macrophage reprogramming immunotherapy company, said on Monday it plans to raise $212 million through private investment in public equity, selling 212 million shares at $1 each. The price represents an 11.5% discount to Friday’s close, according to the company’s filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
The company plans to invest the majority of the $212 million in Rain (RAIN), the utility token behind the Rain decentralized prediction market on the Arbitrum network, marking the first corporate strategy centered on a prediction market token, according to a Monday announcement shared with Cointelegraph.
“We see prediction markets as one of the most exciting emerging sectors in the blockchain space,” with “exceptional” long-term growth potential, Shai Novik, executive chairman at Enlivex Therapeutics, told Cointelegraph.
“By entering now, we benefit from a first-mover advantage in a fundamentally strong category.”
When asked about the reason for choosing the Rain protocol, Novik said that its “decentralized” architecture stood out, as it serves as a “scalable model which supports global access and growth.”
Enlivex expects to complete its Rain purchases within 30 days of the offering’s close.
According to data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, most of the 100 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization ended the week in the green.
The SPX6900 (SPX) memecoin rose over 43% as the week’s biggest winner, followed by the Layer-1 blockchain Kaspa’s (KAS) token, up 39% during the past week.
Total value locked in DeFi. Source: DefiLlama
Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education regarding this dynamically advancing space.
The Cocoon decentralized AI network, a privacy-preserving distributed computing platform built on The Open Network (TON) — an independent layer-1 blockchain associated with the Telegram messaging application — went live on Sunday.
Cocoon allows owners of graphics processing units (GPUs) to rent their computing power to the network, processing user queries and requests in return for Toncoin (TON), the native token of the TON blockchain.
The decentralized AI network has processed its first requests from users, and GPU owners are already profiting from renting out their hardware, according to Telegram co-founder Pavel Durov. He said:
“Centralized compute providers such as Amazon and Microsoft act as expensive intermediaries that drive up prices and reduce privacy. Cocoon solves both the economic and confidentiality issues associated with legacy AI compute providers.”
Durov announced the release of Cocoon at the Blockchain Life 2025 conference in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), in October, as an answer to user demand for an AI platform that would protect privacy and data from large, centralized AI service providers.
The blockchain community, privacy advocates, and cypherpunks have long warned against the negative social effects of centralized AI, advocating for decentralized AI networks as a public good.
Durov announces Cocoon at the Blockchain Life 2025 conference in Dubai. Source: Blockchain Life 2025
Decentralized AI and self-sovereignty: an antidote to a centralized dystopia
Centralized AI systems give governments and corporations enormous leverage over individuals that can compromise user privacy, threaten traditional cybersecurity safeguards, and lead to social conditioning by organized actors, David Holtzman, chief strategy officer of the Naoris decentralized security protocol, told Cointelegraph.
These threats can be mitigated by applying blockchain technology to AI to verify sources of information, ensure tamper-proof records, and allow nodes on distributed computing networks to communicate in a trustless way, he added.
In 2024, AI researchers from the Dfinity Foundation, the non-profit organization that steers development of the Internet Computer Protocol (ICP), and executives from decentralized AI developer Onicai outlined seven rules to ensure ethical AI.
These included running AI through permissionless blockchain networks to ensure transparency and data integrity.
A poll conducted by the Digital Currency Group (DCG) in May showed that 77% of the 2,036 respondents surveyed said that decentralized AI would benefit society more than centralized systems.
Greenidge Generation Holdings, a Bitcoin (BTC) mining company, disclosed that a fire broke out at its mining facility in Dresden, New York, where it co-hosts operations with mining company NYDIG.
The fire broke out on Sunday due to an “electrical switchgear failure,” forcing the company to de-energize the entire facility, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filing.
The fire did not damage the mining rigs, and the company said it would resume normal operations within a “few weeks,” without providing specific dates.
Greenidge disclosed the fire at the Dresden, New York, facility in a recent SEC filing. Source: Greenidge
Greenidge’s Dresden site generates 106 megawatts of natural gas energy to power its mining operations and machines co-hosted with NYDIG, according to TheMinerMag.
The downtime caused by the fire showcased the challenges of commercial mining operations, which operate on thin margins and must weather supply chain issues, high energy costs, equipment failures, dwindling block rewards, and regulatory hurdles to remain profitable.
The latest headwinds to hit the mining industry are straining miners even more
Hashprice, a critical metric for miner profitability that measures expected profits per unit of computing power, dropped to about $35 petahashes per second (PH/s) in November as BTC plunged to lows of about $80,000.
For context, mining operations typically become unprofitable around the $40 PH/s level. The hash price is back to about $39 PH/s at the time of this writing, according to Hashrate Index.
Bitcoin mining hash price August-November 2025. Source: Hashrate Index
Stablecoin issuer Tether confirmed it shut down its mining operations in Uruguay on Tuesday, citing surging energy costs as the main reason for the exit.
The company was also in a dispute with a local state-owned energy provider over $4.8 million in unpaid energy bills and fees.
The officials are probing whether Bitmain’s application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), the hardware used to mine proof-of-work (PoW) cryptocurrencies, could be remotely accessed and used for espionage.
Bitmain is a Chinese company that has about an 80% market share of mining hardware, and any potential ban could make things even more challenging for the mining industry.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino and market analysts pushed back against S&P Global’s downgraded rating of USDt’s (USDT) ability to maintain its US dollar peg, saying that the ratings agency did not account for all of Tether’s assets and revenues.
The Tether Group’s total assets at the end of Q3 2025 totaled about $215 billion, while its total stablecoin liabilities were about $184.5 billion, according to Ardoino, who referenced Tether’s Q3 attestation report. He added:
“Tether had, at the end of Q3 2025, about $7 billion in excess equity, on top of the about $184.5 billion in stablecoin reserves, plus about another $23 billion in retained earnings as part of our Tether Group equity.
S&P made the same mistake of not considering the additional Group Equity, nor the roughly $500 million in monthly base profits generated by US Treasury yields alone,” Ardoino continued.
S&P Global downgraded USDt’s dollar-peg rating to “weak” on Wednesday, the lowest score on its scale, prompting fear, uncertainty, and doubt from some analysts about the company, which has become a critical piece of crypto market infrastructure.
Arthur Hayes, a market analyst and founder of the BitMEX crypto exchange, speculated that Tether is buying large quantities of gold and BTC to compensate for income shortfalls produced by falling US Treasury yields.
As the Federal Reserve slashes interest rates, the gold and BTC should go up in value, Hayes said, but he also warned that a steep correction in these assets could spell trouble for Tether.
“A roughly 30% decline in the gold and BTC position would wipe out their equity, and then USDt would be, in theory, insolvent,” he said.
Joseph Ayoub, the former lead digital asset analyst at financial services giant Citi, said he spent “hundreds” of hours researching Tether as an analyst for the company, and rebuffed Hayes’ analysis.
Tether has excess assets beyond what it reports, has an extremely lucrative business that generates billions of dollars in interest income with only 150 employees, and is better collateralized than traditional banks, Ayoub said.
Several crypto-linked stocks climbed on Friday as prediction-market odds of a December rate cut surged to 87% on Polymarket, the highest level this month.
Three US-listed Bitcoin miners led the rally, with Cleanspark, Riot Platforms and Cipher Mining all rising in the session and showing double-digit gains over the past five days.
Probability of a US rate cut in December. Source: Polymarket
Yahoo Finance data showed Circle, the issuer of USDC, jumped nearly 10% in early trading, while Michael Saylor’s Strategy and Coinbase notched more modest increases at the time of writing.
Bitcoin (BTC) was also up around 7% on the week, after dropping to around $82,000 on Nov. 21, according to CoinGecko data.
Much of the volatility in prediction-market pricing this month has been driven by comments from Federal Reserve officials.
On Oct. 29, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said a December cut was “not a foregone conclusion,” a remark investors took as hawkish — which means the Fed could delay rate cuts and keep conditions tight. Polymarket odds slipped from 89% the day before to as low as 22% by Nov. 20.
Sentiment shifted on Nov. 17 after Fed Governor Christopher Waller said the central bank should consider cutting rates next month, arguing that “the labor market is still weak and near stall speed” and that inflation is now “relatively close” to the Fed’s 2% target.
Prediction markets, such as Kalshi and Polymarket, which enable bettors to wager on the outcomes of real-world events, have expanded their reach and influence this year.
On Nov. 13, Polymarket inked a multi-year agreement with TKO Group Holdings to serve as the official prediction-market partner for the Ultimate Fighting Championships and Zuffa Boxing. The partnership came shortly after it partnered with North American fantasy sports operator PrizePicks.
The same month, Kalshi raised $1 billion from Sequoia Capital and CapitalG, pushing its valuation to $11 billion, according to a TechCrunch report citing a person familiar with the deal. The new round followed a $300 million raise in October.
On Nov. 19, rumors emerged that Coinbase is developing its own prediction-market platform after tech researcher Jane Manchun Wong posted screenshots of an unreleased site. Wong’s images indicated the product would be offered through Coinbase Financial Markets and backed by Kalshi.
On Wednesday, Robinhood said prediction markets have quickly become one of its fastest-growing revenue drivers, with more than one million users trading nine billion contracts since the product launched in March through a partnership with Kalshi.
The native token of the Ethereum network, Ether (ETH), is undervalued in nine out of 12 commonly used valuation models, according to Ki Young Ju, a market analyst and CEO of crypto market analysis platform CryptoQuant.
A composite “fair value” using all 12 valuation models prices ETH at about $4,836, an over 58% gain compared to its price at the time of this writing.
Each valuation model was rated on a three-tiered scale for reliability, with three being the most reliable. Eight out of the 12 models feature a reliability rating of at least two. “These models were built by trusted experts across academia and traditional finance,” Ju said.
12 different ETH valuation models signal that ETH is undervalued at current market prices just north of $3,000. Source: ETHval
The App Capital valuation model, which accounts for total on-chain assets, including stablecoins, ERC-20 tokens, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), real-world tokenized assets (RWAs), and bridged assets, prices ETH at a fair value of $4,918, according to ETHval.
Using Metcalfe’s Law, which states that the value of a network grows in proportion to the square of real active users or the number of nodes in the network, projects an ETH price of $9,484, meaning the asset is over 211% undervalued, according to the model.
Valuing ETH through the Layer-2 (L2) framework, which accounts for the total value locked (TVL) in Ethereum’s layer-2 scaling network ecosystem, projects a price of $4,633 per ETH, meaning that ETH is about 52% undervalued.
The composite fair value of ETH over one year. Source: ETHval
The Ethereum community and analysts continue to debate how to value the world’s first smart contract platform properly, with many saying that traditional valuation models are not sufficient to value nascent digital assets and decentralized blockchain networks.
Despite the mostly rosy outlook, one valuation model says ETH is grossly overvalued
The Revenue Yield valuation model, which values ETH by the annual revenue generated by the network, divided by the staking yield on ETH, says that ETH at current prices of over $3,000 is overvalued by over 57%.
ETH is overvalued, according to the Revenue Yield valuation model. Source: ETHval
Revenue Yield is the most reliable valuation model for accurately pricing ETH, according to ETHval’s criteria and methodology.
ETH should carry a price tag of about $1,296, according to the model, highlighting the Ethereum network’s dwindling revenue generation as fees reach record lows and competing networks absorb some of its market share.
Asset manager CoinShares withdrew its Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) application for a staked Solana exchange-traded fund (ETF) on Friday.
The structuring deal and asset purchase behind the proposed fund were never completed, according to the SEC filing, which states:
“The Registration Statement sought to register shares to be issued in connection with a transaction that was ultimately not effectuated. No shares were sold, or will be sold, pursuant to the above-mentioned Registration Statement.”
The first staked Solana (SOL) ETF, issued by REX-Osprey, debuted in the United States in June, followed by investment company Bitwise’s staked SOL ETF in October.
Net inflows into Solana ETFs since Nov. 10. Source: CoinGlass
Bitwise’s ETF launched with nearly $223 million in assets on its first day of trading, managing to rack up about half the value accrued in the REX-Osprey ETF, which had been trading for months at that point, according to ETF analyst Eric Balchunas.
Despite the launch of staked Solana ETFs and investor demand for these products, the price of SOL has not kept pace and has been in a downtrend since its high of over $250 per coin in September.
SOL ETFs drop to much fanfare, but SOL’s price remains depressed
Solana ETFs attracted over $369 million in capital flows during November, as investors chased the yield-bearing opportunities of staked SOL investment vehicles advertising 5-7% staking rewards.
The Solana ETFs bucked the trend exhibited by BTC and Ether (ETH) ETFs that experienced record outflows during October and November by clocking multiday inflow streaks, even as crypto prices were collapsing.
SOL’s price action remains depressed and well below all-time highs reached at the start of 2025. Source: TradingView
SOL’s price hit a five-month low of approximately $120 in November, representing a 60% reduction from its all-time high of around $295 reached in January 2025.
The token’s meteoric rise in January was attributed to the launch of the Official Trump memecoin on the network, fueling memecoins trading on Solana.
Disclosure: This is a paid article. Readers should conduct further research prior to taking any actions. Learn more ›
The digital asset landscape has matured significantly over the past several years. Simple spot holding is no longer the only viable strategy for generating substantial returns. Today’s market rewards precision, algorithmic discipline, and above all else, liquidity.
For skilled traders, the barrier to entry is rarely knowledge. Instead, it is capitalization. A trader may possess a strategy with a high Sharpe ratio and disciplined risk management, yet find their growth stunted by a personal account size that renders the math irrelevant.
This disconnect between skill and capital has given rise to a sophisticated ecosystem of crypto proprietary trading. The concept extends far beyond simply borrowing funds. It represents access to institutional-grade infrastructure that bridges the gap between retail speculation and professional execution.
The Capital Efficiency Paradox
Why do profitable traders fail to scale?
The answer often lies in mathematics rather than market movement. A trader operating with a 5,000 USDT personal account must take outsized risks to generate a livable income. This frequently leads to over-leveraging positions to the point of ruin. In contrast, a trader managing a funded account of 200,000 USDT can target conservative, low-variance moves and still generate substantial returns.
This dynamic creates what we might call the efficiency paradox: having more capital allows a trader to take less risk while making more money. By utilizing a proprietary firm’s resources, the focus shifts from desperate account flipping to sustainable wealth generation. The pressure to hit “home runs” evaporates entirely, replaced by the professional pursuit of consistent base hits.
Psychological Detachment as an Edge
When personal savings are on the line, emotional attachment distorts decision-making in profound ways. The fear of loss triggers the amygdala, causing traders to cut winners early. Even worse, it often leads to revenge trading after a loss. Proprietary trading constructs a firewall between the trader’s lifestyle and their trading capital, fundamentally changing the psychological equation.
In a funded environment, the downside is capped at a defined level. A trader might face a drawdown limit, but they are not risking their mortgage payment or emergency savings. This psychological freedom allows for the execution of strategies with cold, calculated precision. When the risk is systemic rather than personal, the trader can finally operate with the objectivity required to extract value from volatile markets.
Evaluating the Execution Environment
Not all funding models are created equal, and the differences matter significantly. In the early days of prop trading, firms were largely focused on Forex. They treated crypto as an afterthought, offering poor spreads and artificial slippage. The modern crypto trader requires a specialized environment built specifically for digital assets. If the underlying technology does not mirror live exchange conditions, the strategy is doomed to fail regardless of its theoretical merit.
A robust trading infrastructure must offer direct access to order books without intermediaries. Whether a trader is scalping Bitcoin perpetuals or navigating complex options strategies, the execution must be instantaneous.
This is where the distinction between a simulation and a career-building platform becomes evident. Identifying the best crypto prop trading firm requires careful examination of the execution model. The key is looking for firms like HyroTrader that route through major liquidity providers like ByBit or Binance rather than internal dealing desks that trade against their clients.
The Importance of True Market Data
A chart is only as good as its data feed, and this principle cannot be overstated. Artificial “wicks” designed to stop out retail traders are a hallmark of inferior platforms that prioritize their own profit over trader success. Professional prop firms utilize real-time data streams that ensure what a trader sees on the chart matches the global order book with complete accuracy.
For algorithmic traders and those utilizing automated bots, this transparency is non-negotiable. Strategies that rely on technical levels or high-frequency inputs cannot function properly if the price feed is manipulated or delayed. The ability to integrate tools like TradingView or connect via API directly to the exchange liquidity is what separates a gamified experience from a professional trading operation.
Meet HyroTrader
Founded in 2022 and based in Prague, HyroTrader is a proprietary trading firm specializing in cryptocurrency for traders. The company offers funded accounts of up to 200,000 USDT, which can be scaled to 1 million USDT with consistent performance.
Traders utilize real-time data to trade on ByBit or Binance through CLEO, ensuring authentic trading conditions. Profit sharing begins at 70% and can increase to 90%, with payouts made in USDT or USDC within 12-24 hours after earning $100 in profit.
Unlike many competitors, HyroTrader provides unlimited evaluation periods and refunds the challenge fee after the first payout, lowering entry costs. With over $2 million paid out and a global community, it offers a legitimate opportunity for skilled crypto traders to access institutional capital without risking personal funds.
Navigating Risk and Drawdown Constraints
The primary critique of proprietary trading is often the strictness of risk rules. However, these constraints are actually the training wheels of professionalism when viewed through the right lens. A 5% daily drawdown limit or a 10% maximum loss ceiling is not a trap designed to fail traders. It is a standard institutional risk parameter used by professionals worldwide. No hedge fund manager in the world is permitted to lose 20% of a portfolio in a single afternoon, and for good reason.
Learning to navigate these parameters is what refines a gambler into a genuine risk manager. The best environments offer unlimited time for evaluation, recognizing that quality trading cannot be rushed. The artificial pressure of a “30-day challenge” often forces traders to violate their own risk management rules just to beat the clock. Removing the time limit allows the trader to wait patiently for the highest probability setups, aligning their activity with market conditions rather than an arbitrary calendar deadline.
Scaling: The Path to Seven Figures
The trajectory for a crypto prop trader should not end at the initial funding stage. The true goal is scalability over time. A static account size eventually limits potential regardless of skill level, whereas a dynamic scaling plan rewards consistency and discipline.
Consider a roadmap that begins at 200,000 USDT. Through consistent performance, avoiding significant drawdowns, and hitting modest profit targets, a trader can see their allocation grow to 1,000,000 USDT. At this level, a profit split of 80% or 90% becomes genuinely life-changing, transforming trading from a side pursuit into a legitimate wealth-building vehicle.
The Cash Flow Advantage
Liquidity is king in any trading endeavor. In traditional finance, waiting 30 days for a wire transfer is standard practice. In the crypto ecosystem, money moves at the speed of the blockchain itself. Traders who live off their market returns require agility. They need the ability to request a withdrawal on a Sunday and receive USDT or USDC within hours rather than weeks.
This fluidity turns trading from a speculative venture into a reliable business operation with predictable cash flows. When profits can be realized and withdrawn immediately upon hitting a threshold, the feedback loop of success is powerfully reinforced. It allows the trader to compound their personal net worth steadily while leaving the firm’s capital at work in the markets.
The Future of Decentralized Opportunity
The convergence of cryptocurrency volatility and proprietary capital offers a unique moment in financial history. It allows individuals with skills to act as institutional players, regardless of their geographic location or personal net worth. The playing field has never been more level for talented traders seeking meaningful opportunities.
Whether employing high-frequency trading bots, executing manual price-action strategies, or hedging with options, the vehicle matters as much as the driver. By leveraging significant capital without personal risk, utilizing direct exchange execution, and operating within professional risk parameters, traders can unlock the full potential of the crypto markets. The era of the undercapitalized retail trader is ending. The era of the funded professional has arrived.
Disclaimer: This is a sponsored post. CryptoSlate does not endorse any of the projects mentioned in this article. Investors are encouraged to perform necessary due diligence.
The United Kingdom will require domestic crypto platforms to report all transactions from UK-resident users starting in 2026, expanding the scope of the Cryptoasset Reporting Framework (CARF).
The change will give His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) — the UK’s tax authority — automatic access to both domestic and cross-border crypto data for the first time, tightening tax compliance ahead of CARF’s first global information exchange in 2027.
CARF, designed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), is a framework for the automatic cross-border exchange of crypto transaction data between tax authorities worldwide. Its rules require crypto asset service providers to perform due diligence, verify user identities, and report detailed transaction information on an annual basis.
The framework primarily focuses on cross-border activity, meaning that crypto transactions occurring entirely within the United Kingdom would fall outside automatic reporting channels, according to a policy paper shared by HMRC on Wednesday.
By expanding the framework to cover domestic users, the government aims to prevent crypto from becoming an “off-CRS” asset class, one that escapes the visibility applied to traditional financial accounts under the Common Reporting Standard.
UK officials say the unified approach will streamline reporting for crypto companies while giving tax authorities a more complete data set to identify noncompliance and assess taxpayer obligations.
The UK also proposed a “no gain, no loss” tax framework on Wednesday that would defer capital gains liabilities for decentralized finance (DeFi) users until they sell the underlying tokens, a shift the local industry has broadly welcomed.
Governments step up crypto tax oversight worldwide
As crypto moves further into the financial mainstream, governments worldwide are updating their tax codes to capture digital asset activity more clearly and consistently.
In South Korea, the National Tax Service announced in October that it will seize cryptocurrency held in cold wallets and conduct home searches for hardware devices if it suspects taxpayers are hiding digital assets to evade obligations.
More recently, Spain’s Sumar parliamentary group proposed raising the top tax rate on crypto gains to 47%, according to local reports. The amendments would shift crypto profits into the general income bracket and set a 30% flat rate for corporate holders.
On Thursday, Switzerland announced that it had postponed the start of automatic crypto information exchange with foreign tax authorities until 2027, as it determines which countries it will share data with. CARF rules will still enter Swiss law on Jan. 1, but their rollout has been delayed, with transitional measures planned to ease compliance for domestic crypto firms.
Meanwhile, in the United States, Representative Warren Davidson introduced a bill in November that would allow Americans to pay for federal taxes in Bitcoin, with the contributions routed into a strategic national BTC reserve.
The proposal, known as the Bitcoin for America Act, would exempt these payments from capital gains taxes by treating the transferred Bitcoin as neither a gain nor a loss for the taxpayer.
