Near the beginning of last year, the total crypto market rebounded 24.0% to $3.5 trillion. A clear reminder that crypto remains one of the most actively followed financial arenas worldwide. But, for a new crypto prop firm trader, size alone doesn’t answer the first, very important question: where do you begin?
A good starting market, supported by platforms like Get Leveraged, gives you something to study, compare and understand without drowning you in noise. That’s why Bitcoin and Ethereum sit at the front of this conversation. They’re widely covered, heavily traded and supported by a growing set of regulated and institutional reference points.
Bitcoin accounted for 59.1% of total crypto market capitalization at the end of Q1 2025. Ethereum plays a different role, defined through smart contracts, decentralized applications, DeFi, NFTs and wider blockchain utility.
That combination gives you a useful starting pair: one market often treated as the crypto benchmark, and another tied to much of the activity built on blockchain networks.
Start Where the Map Is Clearest
Every trader wants opportunity, but opportunity becomes easier to use when the market makes sense. For many crypto prop firm traders, Bitcoin is the clearest first reference point because so much of the wider crypto market is measured against it.
Bitcoin ended Q1 2025 with 59.1% dominance, a level not seen since Q1 2021. That doesn’t make Bitcoin simple in the sense of being predictable. It means BTC has a central role that makes it easier to compare with the rest of the market.
When Bitcoin rises, falls or consolidates, traders often look at how the rest of crypto responds. That relationship gives you context. You’re not just staring at a candle chart; you’re watching the market’s main reference asset interact with liquidity, sentiment, ETF flows, derivatives positioning and macro attention.
Ethereum gives you a different perspective. It isn’t trying to be a second version of Bitcoin. Its story sits around network utility, including smart contracts, decentralized applications, DeFi and NFTs. That gives ETH a separate path for traders to follow.
This can be extremely useful because prop trading rewards repeatable thinking. You need to know why you’re watching a market, what tends to move it and which sources can help you check your view before you act.
With smaller crypto assets, the story can be harder to separate from short bursts of attention. Sometimes the narrative is thin. Sometimes the price action is active but the reasoning behind it is unclear. BTC and ETH offer more published analysis, more historical chart data and more market commentary than most other crypto pairs.
That helps when you’re learning.
The goal isn’t to make a trade feel easy. The goal is to make your decision process easier to review. If your first pair is BTCUSD or ETHUSD, you can usually find more market data, more institutional commentary and more educational material to compare against your own notes.
That can be especially valuable because Bitcoin and Ethereum now sit closer to mainstream finance than they did a few years ago. The SEC approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded product shares in January 2024, which placed Bitcoin into a more familiar regulated market wrapper for many investors. The SEC also approved exchange rule changes connected to spot Ether ETF listings in May 2024, giving Ethereum a stronger place in U.S. market discussions.
That doesn’t remove the need for care. It gives you more reference points.
And in prop firm trading, reference points are useful because you’re not simply trying to be right once. You’re trying to build a process you can repeat under rules.
Liquidity Is the Friendly Filter
Once you understand what you’re trading, the next question is how cleanly that market trades. This is where liquidity becomes one of the most helpful concepts for a crypto prop firm trader.
Liquidity means there are enough buyers and sellers for trades to happen with less friction. In a more liquid market, the gap between the buying price and selling price is often tighter, and the displayed price can give you a more reliable read. For a beginner, that helps because your chart, entry, exit and risk plan all depend on price behaving in a readable way.
A Q1 2024 Bitcoin liquidity analysis gives this idea some strong detail. In Q1 2024, the cost to execute $1 million in Bitcoin-USD ranged from 4.5 basis points to 7.5 basis points, with a mean a little over 5 basis points. That gives you a concrete way to talk about liquidity instead of treating it as a vague trading buzzword.
The same analysis found that Bitcoin-USDT execution costs were roughly 30% lower than Bitcoin-USD execution costs during Q1 2024. That detail is especially useful for prop firm traders because crypto can be quoted in different ways. BTCUSD and BTCUSDT may look similar at first glance, but execution conditions can differ.
Even the quote currency deserves attention.
Global Bitcoin perpetual swap markets on Binance, OKX and Bybit had mean and peak execution costs roughly 50% lower than the spot market. That helps explain why large crypto pairs are so often discussed in prop-style trading environments, where derivatives, leverage and rule-based evaluations are common.
Liquidity is a cleaner conversation between the market’s buyers and sellers. When many people are participating, price can speak more clearly. When fewer people are involved, price can jump around with less warning and less depth behind each move.
That doesn’t mean a liquid market can’t move quickly. Bitcoin and Ethereum can still be volatile. But when you’re starting out, it helps to choose markets where the mechanics are easier to observe.
This is where BTC and ETH give you a kinder learning curve. You can study how price behaves around major market hours, how funding or derivatives activity may influence short-term moves and how major news is absorbed by a deeper market. You still have to do the work, but the information is easier to find.
For a prop firm trader, that can support better habits. You’re likely operating under rules around drawdown, position size, daily loss limits or consistency. A more liquid pair can make it easier to plan entries and exits because the spread and order flow are less likely to be distorted by thin participation.
The first question, then, should be which market gives me the clearest read?
That question keeps you focused. It also keeps your trading plan grounded in conditions you can observe rather than a social feed you can’t control.
Big Markets Leave Bigger Clues
Liquidity tells you how a market trades. Infrastructure tells you how many ways people have to access, price, hedge and study that market.
Bitcoin and Ethereum have a major advantage here. They’re supported by a deeper set of institutional products, derivatives markets, benchmarks and regulated access points than most crypto assets. That gives traders more clues to work with.
In Q1 2025, average daily volume in CME Group’s crypto futures and options suite reached 198,000 contracts, equal to $11.3 billion notional. CME also reported open interest of 251,000 contracts, equal to $21.8 billion notional, across that suite in Q1 2025.
Those numbers show that BTC and ETH aren’t just retail conversation pieces. They’re also used in structured markets where participants manage exposure, hedge risk and track pricing through futures and options.
Open interest imeasures the number of outstanding contracts that haven’t yet been settled. When open interest is high, it can point to on going participation (rather than a one-day burst of volume).
This helps understand the context underneath.
CME’s crypto product suite traded 29.4 million contracts in 2024, worth over $1.7 trillion notional; and Bitcoin had an especially strong role in that report. Bitcoin futures average daily open interest exceeded $10 billion in 2024 (more than four times the 2023 level). Ethereum also has its own institutional trail. Nearly 12 million contracts traded between Ether and Micro Ether futures in 2024.
For a new prop firm trader, this kind of data won’t give you a magic entry. It gives you a better research environment. You can compare spot movement with futures activity, look at whether participation is rising or falling and understand whether a move is happening in a market with meaningful depth behind it.
That helps you ask better questions before taking risk.
If two crypto markets give you more data, more participation and more ways to compare price action, why wouldn’t you begin there before moving into thinner markets?
The answer may vary from trader to trader, but the learning advantage is clear. BTC and ETH give you a richer feedback loop. You can review your trades against broader market data instead of relying only on the result of one entry or exit.
This is also where confidence becomes more grounded. You’re not depending on a single opinion. You’re using several types of evidence: market capitalization, trading volume, execution cost, open interest, regulated product activity and asset-specific narratives.
That’s a far stronger base than choosing the coin that moved the most yesterday.
The First-Pair Checklist
By this point, BTC and ETH have earned their place as natural starting markets, but that doesn’t mean every trader should treat them the same way. Your first pair should fit your rules, your learning style and the market conditions you can understand well enough to explain.
The SEC’s January 2024 approval of spot bitcoin ETP listings made Bitcoin more accessible through regulated national securities exchanges, while the SEC statement also made clear that the approval didn’t amount to an endorsement of Bitcoin itself. That distinction is healthy for traders. It reminds you that access and suitability are separate ideas.
The same thinking applies to crypto prop firm accounts. A firm may offer BTC, ETH and other crypto pairs, but you still need to decide which market gives you the clearest way to plan, execute and review.
Use this checklist before choosing your first crypto prop firm pair:
- Can you explain what moves the asset without relying on hype?
- Does the pair have enough liquidity for cleaner entries and exits?
- Can you find reliable data on price, volume, spreads and open interest?
- Do the firm’s rules make sense for the pair’s normal volatility?
- Can you review each trade afterward and identify what you learned?
That final point may be the most valuable. A first market should teach you something, even when the trade doesn’t work. BTC and ETH are strong candidates because there’s usually enough information around them to help you separate a weak plan from a normal market move.
CoinGecko’s Q2 2025 report adds a useful reminder here. Bitcoin dominance increased to 62.1% of total crypto market capitalization by the end of Q2 2025, while Ethereum’s dominance inched up to 8.8%. That tells you both markets remained central to the way capital was distributed across crypto during that period.
ETH rose from $1,805 to $2,488 in Q2 2025, a 36.4% increase within the quarter, while still remaining below its 2025 opening price of $3,337. That’s the kind of nuance a trader needs. Ethereum can be active and widely followed, but it still has its own cycle, relative strength profile and participation pattern.
A smaller coin may give dramatic movement, but dramatic movement isn’t the same as a strong learning environment. When you’re trading under a prop firm structure, the account rules often make discipline more important than chasing the largest candle.
BTC and ETH help because they give you more ways to slow the decision down. You can check the broader market. You can look at futures data. You can compare spot and derivative activity. You can read multiple credible sources before forming a view.
That doesn’t guarantee a better outcome. It can support a better process. And when you’re new to crypto prop trading, process is where your attention belongs.
Begin With the Markets That Teach You Best
Bitcoin and Ethereum make sense as first crypto prop firm markets because they give you a stronger learning base. They have scale, recognition, deeper trading infrastructure and more accessible research than most smaller crypto assets.
CME’s 2024 and Q1 2025 crypto reports show meaningful institutional activity across Bitcoin and Ether futures and options. Your first market should help you think more clearly about this. BTC and ETH do that well because they give you more information to work with, more market structure to study and more context for reviewing your decisions.
As crypto trading access continues to mature through regulated products, derivatives venues, benchmarks and education, the traders who benefit most may be the ones who start with the clearest foundations. You don’t need to trade every coin to become a better crypto trader. You need a market that helps you build a repeatable way of thinking.
