The LSE Directory / Prop firms
The Funded Trader (branded TFT) is a United States proprietary trading firm, operated under Easton Consulting Technologies LLC, that sells paid trading-evaluation challenges to retail traders. A customer pays an upfront fee to attempt one of several challenge formats; traders who pass are allocated a simulated funded account, advertised up to $600,000 on its core account tier, and can keep a profit split of up to 95% of the gains they generate trading it, without risking capital beyond the challenge fee itself. The firm markets itself as having gamified the proprietary-trading evaluation model, adding leaderboards, trading competitions, and a Discord and YouTube trader community around the standard pass-the-challenge product used across the sector. It supports several third-party trading platforms, including MATCH-TRADER, DXTrade, and cTrader, the last of which it was approved to offer to US clients from May 2025. Its challenge lineup spans single-phase formats aimed at faster payouts (the Knight Challenge) through to multi-phase formats that permit expert advisors and weekend position holding (the Royal and Dragon challenges), a spread of formats it uses to differentiate against other firms that restrict EA use or weekend holds. The Funded Trader was incorporated on 12 May 2021 by Angelo Ciaramello together with three co-founders, with Ciaramello serving as CEO. A December 2023 lawsuit filed by former co-founder and CMO Nicholas D'Arcangelo against Ciaramello and two other executives, over the redistribution of his equity stake, disclosed in its filings that the platform generated multiple seven-figure monthly revenue by late 2022 and had by then distributed more than $30 million in profits to over 30,000 retail traders. Finance Magnates reported the firm had grown to more than 80,000 funded accounts by 2024. In March 2024, The Funded Trader paused all operations after a backlog from a trading-platform migration led to delayed and disputed trader payouts; the firm said it paid out more than $17 million in the first two months of 2024 while withholding just over $2 million in disputed withdrawals during the same period, and Ciaramello described the pause as a self-imposed internal audit. The firm resumed activity later in 2024, and through 2025 and into 2026 it has been clearing its payout backlog, relaunching $100,000-plus funded accounts, and adding newer products such as the Knight Pro Challenge and futures-trading challenges.
