Why Paper Trading Should Be the Default, Not an Afterthought

There's something broken about how most trading platforms work. You sign up. You land on a dashboard full of charts, numbers, and buttons. You're immediately prompted to connect a brokerage account or deposit funds. Maybe there's a "demo mode" buried somewhere in the settings, but the entire onboarding flow pushes you toward real money as fast as possible. This is backwards. And it's not just bad UX — it's genuinely irresponsible. The industry's incentive problem Let's be honest about why platforms do this. Most trading platforms make money from commissions, payment for order flow, or spread markups. A user paper trading generates zero revenue. A user depositing $5,000 and placing real trades generates revenue from day one. The financial incentive is to get users into real money as quickly as possible, and every design decision flows from that. This creates a perverse dynamic where the platform's interests are directly opposed to the user's interests. A new trader depositing money on d