I have been following the TopOneFutures Discord, as some new troubling events have unfolded this past weekend. Hopefully it’s not turning into a FastTrackTrader situation, which at least one trader in the Discord already compared it to. At this point, it’s too early to tell. I decided I ought to document some of this for traders who are still considering TopOneFutures and possibly affected by the new changes.
Just this past week, I passed my first TopOneFutures funded account. I have yet to place a trade on it, but I will begin doing so from Monday. But other traders have been there for several weeks, some of whom already had multiple payouts and the opportunity to get moved to live.
According to their rules, you are considered for live trading after your third successful payout. Upon receiving your third payout and being chosen to go live, you will have your SIM funded accounts paused. Only one live account is allocated to each trader, so you begin trading that account. See the rules as of June 8, 2025 below.
TopOneFutures Live Transition Rules
When transitioning to Live, Trader will start with a maximum of one (1) Live Funded Account. If you have any other accounts, they will be paused.
Transitioning to Live
After 3 successful payouts from one account, a risk manager will review your account and either:
- Keep you in the Sim Funded environment for further review
- Transition you to a Live Funded Account
Note: Top One Futures may transition you to a Live Funded Account sooner than your third payout.
How Do We Move Funds to Live?
Your Sim Funded profits (after your third payout) up to a maximum of 10% of your starting sim balance will be carried over to your Live Account.
Examples:
- Trader has one $100K Sim Funded Account with a balance of $109,000 after their 3rd payout. ($9,000 in profit)
$9,000 will be moved to live as their starting balance.
​ - Trader has three $150K Sim Funded Accounts ($450K total) with a total balance across all three accounts of $470,000 after three payouts on each account. ($20,000 in profit).
$15,000 will be moved to live as the traders starting balance.
Live Funded Payout Policy
- Profit Split: When a trader is moved to a live funded account, their profit split will go from 90/10 to 80/20 and Top One Futures will re-invest their 20% share into helping you scale your capital up to $2.5 million in bonus scaled accounts.
(see scaling plan below)
- Daily Payouts: Payouts are available every 24-hours after the previous payout. (Minimum payout = $200)
​ - Profits available for payout: Withdraw-able profits are profits created in excess of your starting balance.
Discord is Telling a Different Story
The line that says “1. Keep you in the Sim Funded environment for further review” used to say “Keep you in the Sim Funded environment with no changes“. This was quietly changed less than 24 hours ago.
Initially, I thought it was a repeat of what happened in Apex in 2024: some gamblers started blowing dozens or hundreds of accounts, and TopOne wanted to end this cycle early before it went further.
To do so, TopOne was selecting some traders with questionable trading styles, and placing them in a probationary $100k SIM funded account.
If they did well on the simulated account, they would be considered for live as normal. If not, they will be removed from TopOne entirely (as they are not compatible with the firm’s goals of funding live traders). It’s unknown what happens to their profits at this point.
However, this is apparently not the case. At least one person I spoke to said that they are being sent to an additional $100k sim funded phase, after reaching 3 payouts on their Straight to Sim Funded Account.
At this time, we are unsure if this applies to the traditional evaluation accounts, or just Straight to Funded traders.
The Discord Messages
Here are some of the messages I saved over the weekend, but note that there’s quite a lot of confusion and misinformation being shared still.
At least one trader is said to be having their SIM funded accounts disabled and their profits inaccessible, while also being denied live. But we don’t know anything about how many accounts he has or what his trading was like.
Sam, a TopOne Moderator reiterates that this rule is only for SIM Farmers. This suggests that my read is correct about this not affecting most traders who are reaching the live transition phase.
Daniel Cabrera Shares his Experience on Twitter
Daniel Cabrera, who goes by dnltrader98 on twitter, was “accidentally” banned and I didn’t see what he said on Discord before his messages were removed.
This is what he posted on Twitter.
Rezzie’s Experience
Traders continued to plead for clarification.
Nigel sums it up briefly here.
Then, a user named “Rezzie” claimed to be one of the traders who is unfairly affected by this. Again, we don’t know how many accounts he breached or his trading style, but he seemed like one of the more composed traders.
Here is the actual email he received regarding his accounts.
“Madryx” reiterates that this situation is not for all traders, only those deemed ‘suspicious’ by the Risk Team.
Were The Multiple Rule Changes an Early Warning Sign?
“Mines” points out something that I also noticed just a few days ago. The rules have changed drastically more than once, limiting the maximum payouts and raising the bar for profit thresholds on most or all accounts, essentially making TopOne less advantageous over other firms. The only logical explanation is that they do not want traders to withdraw as easily as they have been thus far, whether that means reckless gamblers were taking advantage, or they grew too fast (perhaps a 2024 ApexTraderFunding type of situation, but on a smaller scale?).
What the Founder Says
Finally, Clay, the TopOne Founder, arrived to explain the situation. He mentions this is about SIM Farming traders (AKA gamblers) only. Time will tell if this is truly the only type of ‘trader’ being affected.
But many questions still remain unanswered.
It’s a little amusing to see traders discussing what a firm should have done to stay solvent, right in their discord. Unfortunately, many traders were burned by scam operations like FastTrackFunding in 2024. It makes sense that multiple users want to stay alert for the signs of a sinking ship, before it’s too late again.
I agree with Darren here.
Mo Chara Sums Things Up Once More
Top One Futures Clarifies Everything… For Now
Some good news finally came about in the afternoon on June 8th. Top One clarified that only 12 traders had received this new e-mail, and the thousands of other traders are completely unaffected, for now.
These 12 Traders who are being considered to go live have the option to go forward with the live transition by reaching the payout threshold on the new $100k account. If they breach the account, they go back to their SIM accounts.
However, at this time, one question is still unanswered: what happens to the profits for traders who succeed on the $100k account?
Kudos to TopOne for owning up to their mistake and lackluster communication, causing a lot of uproar over the past 48 hours that could have easily been prevented. I was unsure of what to expect, but I’m sure many traders are relieved to hear this.
Expect More Updates Here
I will continue to update this as more information comes out. As always, stay safe out there and trade well, so you don’t risk being put into this kind of shaky situation for no reason.
If you were affected at all by this, please join our Discord and share your experience there so we can determine what’s actually going on and whether we need to avoid this firm for the foreseeable future.
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