Most funded-account programmes give you one way to trade: a leveraged CFD account where every position is a contract that settles in cash. That is the default across the industry, and for forex it makes sense. For crypto it quietly changes what you are practising.
Drift Fund offers both — a leveraged futures account and an unleveraged spot account — and the difference is not a marketing toggle. It changes your position sizing, your risk, and the habits you build.
What you are actually holding
On a futures account, you post margin and control a larger notional position. A $100,000 account with leverage can open a position worth several times the balance. Profit and loss are calculated on the full notional, so the account moves faster in both directions.
On a spot account, there is no leverage and no borrowing. You buy an asset with the balance you have, you own that position, and you can only sell what you hold. A $100,000 spot account opens at most $100,000 of exposure. There is no short-selling, because you cannot sell an asset you do not own.
That single constraint changes everything downstream.
Position sizing stops being guesswork
On a leveraged account, the first question is "how much leverage should I use?" — and it is the question that ends most challenges. Leverage compresses the distance between a normal market move and a breached account.
On spot, the question disappears. Your maximum position is your balance. A 10% adverse move on a full-balance spot position is a 10% drawdown — painful, but survivable and comprehensible. The same 10% move on a 5x leveraged position is a 50% loss, which no risk rule anywhere will let you keep.
This is why spot suits traders who hold positions for days rather than minutes: the position can breathe.
What you give up
Honesty matters more than the pitch here, so: spot gives up real things.
- No shorting. In a falling market you can sit in cash, but you cannot profit from the fall.
- Slower gains. Without leverage, a 10% profit target requires a 10% move in your favour, not a 2% move amplified.
- Crypto only. Spot accounts trade crypto. Forex, metals and indices are leveraged instruments by nature and live on futures accounts.
If your edge is intraday scalping with tight stops, futures is the right account and spot will frustrate you.
What stays identical
Both account types share the same rule book, and that is deliberate:
- The same daily drawdown (4% of the day's starting equity) and maximum drawdown (6%).
- The same mandatory stop-loss rule — every position needs one within five minutes.
- The same news window (no positions held within five minutes of a high-impact event).
- The same consistency requirement before a payout, and the same profit split.
- The same payouts, paid the same way, and verifiable on-chain either way.
You are not buying a lesser product by choosing spot. You are choosing a different risk profile with the same path to funding.
Which one should you take?
A practical way to decide, without the marketing:
Choose futures if you trade intraday, you are comfortable sizing with leverage, you want to short, or you want forex, gold and indices on the same account.
Choose spot if you hold positions for days or weeks, you want your position size to be self-limiting, you came from a spot exchange and want to trade the way you already trade, or leverage has ended your previous challenges.
There is no rule against holding both. Some traders run a spot account for their core positions and a futures account for shorter-term trades — the rules, the platform and the payout process are identical, so nothing has to be relearned.
The part nobody mentions
Whichever you choose, the rules that actually end accounts are not about leverage at all. They are procedural: a position opened without a stop-loss, a position held through a news window, a day that runs past the daily drawdown.
Read the full rule book before your first trade on either account type — it takes ten minutes and it is the highest-return ten minutes in the whole process.
Ready to pick one? Start a challenge and choose your market at checkout.