Ivan Bedoya

You buy a $50k account and run it up to max. Topstep has two options: 1. Let you just milk it for 5-6 payouts with the minimum profit, which costs Topstep $30k. 2. They move you live. If Topstep puts $50k in your live account (real money) and you continue yolo'ing and blow it over the course of a few weeks (the DLL is like $2k, or maybe you can get it expanded). Topstep is out $50k. Topstep is like... nah, I'm not risking the full $50k anymore. We'll still give you your $50k, but it's going to be locked behind profit targets. So you start with $10k. Topstep is now risking $10k of capital. You hit $3k profit, Topstep gives you another $10k. You then proceed to blow the account. Topstep is out $20k now instead of $50k. Or the $30k from your milking plans. Best case for you is you hit your $15k net profits, you get your full $50k from the XFA, Topstep is making $1.5k on your $15k payout. They are still out $50k. I don't know what is scary about what we've seen with Topstep. Lucid already has an escrow program that is worse. Tradeify's live move is even worse than that. TFD straight up is like no, we aren't paying you from sim money, we'll just move you live with a small capital start. Apex laughs itself to the bank as people keep blowing 20 accounts at a time. I will concede that the new live rules should only apply to newly activated XFAs (with the option a refund on a passed eval that hasn't been activated). If that's the scary part you're referring to, then ok. But everyone is out here like, "oh, my hard earned sim profits are mine!". No, they are not. All the firms that have a live program clearly state they can move you live at any time. Also most of these traders are just trying to game the system b/c you only need one max payout to break even on like 50 accounts, so they are just yolo'ing. Sure, the failed attempts are good for prop firms business, but if you want to be able to make money as well, the firm needs to have risk controls in place to prevent huge payouts from pure gambling.