“We are ready to acquire any prop firm that shuts down,” States Astra Capital Group

Monday, 19/08/2024 | 07:12 GMT by Damian Chmiel

The move is intended to respond to the turmoil in the prop trading industry last week.

Up to 20 trading firms may have closed due to MT4 and 5 licensing issues.

In the face of numerous recent retail prop firm failures or suspensions of their operations due to licensing issues with trading platforms, one entity has offered to take over all troubled entities. However, Astra Capital Group sets one condition.

Astra Capital Group Wants to Acquire Prop Firms

Last weekend, Astra Capital announced that it is “ready to acquire any prop firm that shuts down or pauses operations, taking on all their traders” and onboarding them to its platform.

The potential migration would take a maximum of two days, allowing clients to continue trading and struggling business owners to generate some revenue.

Announcement

We are ready to acquire any prop firm that shuts down or pauses operations, taking on all their traders and onboarding them to our platform. Additionally, the migration would take only 1-2 days, depending on the size of the prop firm and the time of the agreement,…
— Astra Capital Group (@AstraFunding) August 15, 2024

In return, Astra expects a 70% share of challenge fees from active traders. “Our risk management team will determine which firms have a healthy number of funded traders and account sizes,” they wrote in a subsequent post. “Based on the 70% of all challenge fees and further risk calculations, we will make our decision. We will not simply do this for free.”

To clarify, we will not be doing this for free. If the prop firm is willing to offer 70% of the challenge fees for all its active traders, our risk management team will determine which firms have a healthy number of funded traders and account sizes. Based on the 70% of all…
— Astra Capital Group (@AstraFunding) August 16, 2024

Astra Capital has only been in the market since early 2024, but it has since introduced its own technology, which allowed it to launch its proprietary trading platform , Astra X, which is currently available for desktop computers and mobile devices.

The company also offers payment cards in cooperation with Visa and has announced the launch of an additional futures trading platform within the next three weeks. Its advertisements regularly appear on large billboards in New York's Times Square.

20 Prop Firms Closed in One Week

Astra Capital's offer comes at a time when allegedly 20 different prop firms announced closures or suspensions of operations in one week.

The decision was prompted by MetaQuotes' move to crack down on trading companies by suspending their licenses for trading products, including the popular MetaTrader platform. Many firms grey-labeled access to MT4 and 5 through regulated FX/CFD brokers, and it appears that MetaQuotes has started to address this issue more thoroughly.

One of the firms that disappeared from the market for this reason was Funds For Traders. At the same time, Indigo Trader Funding and Karma Prop Traders also announced their exit from the market.

Data from the latest survey conducted by PipFarm shows that a maximum of 40% of clients earn money on prop firm challenges, while the rest are capital providers.