Goat Funded Trader (GFT), a retail proprietary trading firm, informed its clients this week that it's introducing a new platform, TradeLocker, to its offerings. This move came shortly before a less pleasant announcement: the withdrawal (once again) of services from MetaTrader platforms. Traders who had been using MetaQuotes tools are now being migrated to MatchTrader.

Goat Funded Trader Gives One Platform and Takes Another

GFT was among the first companies to withdraw MetaTrader in February 2024 due to licensing issues. A month ago, the firm announced that MetaQuotes trading tools were returning to its lineup.

However, the joy of Goat Funded Trader's clients was short-lived. On Thursday morning, the prop firm's CEO, Edoardo Dalla Torre, announced on Discord that it was necessary to withdraw again from offering "Platform4," or MetaTrader 4.

"Due to multiple outages of Platform4 and our continuous commitment to ensure our traders have a good trading experience, all Platform4 accounts will now be migrated to MatchTrader," Dalla Torre stated.

He added that all open positions would be closed and account balances transferred to new accounts within MatchTrader.

The company is reportedly working "on integrating better and more stable options for Platform4 and Platform5, ensuring that we can also offer mobile versions once they're available again."

Are licensing issues once again the problem? It's hard to say, but it appears the platform had been preparing for this move for several days, announcing the launch of a new platform at the beginning of the week.

Officially, GFT announced the addition of TradeLocker to its suite of trading platforms on July 17, a day before the decision to withdraw from MT4. This information appeared on both X (formerly Twitter) and the company's Discord.

TradeLocker, alongside MatchTrader, has become one of the more frequently chosen platforms that prop firms decide to migrate to after experiencing issues with MetaTrader. For example, Top Tier Trader made such a move in February.

Prop Firms' Struggles with MetaTrader

The prop trading industry's problems with MetaQuotes platforms began five months ago when Purple Trading, which grey-labeled its MetaTrader license to prop trading entities, withdrew from its previous agreements.

Due to regulatory changes in the United States, the owner of MetaTrader began cracking down on the prop industry and forced Purple to terminate their services to prop firms. These firms started switching to alternative platforms, although many have since re-offered MetaTrader to their clients.

However, GFT's example shows that the problems may still need to be fully resolved, and MT4 and MT5 remain problematic for firms in the sector. At the same time, they face growing competition from regulated FX/CFD brokers who have also started offering prop challenges to their clients. Their advantage lies in having long-standing and direct agreements with MetaQuotes, allowing them to offer the most popular platforms among retail traders without any interruptions or controversies.