Risk disclosure

Prices of cryptoassets and shares can swing by large amounts within minutes, driven by news, rumours, regulation or the actions of a few large traders. A move against your position can turn a gain into a loss before you have time to react.

For example, a token that has risen for a week can lose a fifth of its value in an afternoon after a single announcement. If you had £1,000 in it, the position would be worth about £800, and a strategy that was already running would have kept trading through the fall.

What to do: decide in advance the most you are prepared to lose in a day and a month, and set those limits in your strategy.

In thin or fast markets there may not be enough buyers or sellers at your price. Orders can then fill at a worse price than expected, a difference known as slippage, or may not fill at all.

This tends to show up most at night, at weekends and during bank holidays, when fewer people are trading, and in smaller assets. A back-test on past data assumes every order fills at a clean price, so live results can be worse than the simulator suggests.

What to do: favour widely traded assets, avoid sizing positions that are large for the market, and expect results to differ from a back-test.

The platform works through API keys that connect to your exchange account. Mistakes in how a key is set up, a connection that drops, or a key that is leaked can cause orders to fail or to be placed unexpectedly.

Typical examples are a key created with the wrong permissions, a key that an exchange has expired without telling you, or a copy of a key that was saved in an email or a shared document. Any one of these can interrupt a strategy or expose your account to someone else.

What to do: create keys with read and trade rights only, never enable withdrawals, restrict them to our server addresses and delete keys you no longer use.

Your assets are held at a third-party exchange or provider, not by us. If that firm fails, is hacked, freezes withdrawals or is closed by a regulator, you could lose access to your funds, and there is no compensation scheme to fall back on.

Several exchanges around the world have collapsed or frozen withdrawals in recent years, leaving customers waiting for months and, in some cases, never being repaid. The same applies to payment providers and banks that serve the crypto sector, which can close accounts at short notice.

What to do: do not keep more at an exchange than you need for trading, and check each provider's own terms and track record.

Software has faults. Bugs, delays in data, internet outages, a problem at the exchange or at our hosting provider can interrupt monitoring or delay an order at the wrong moment.

A strategy that depends on a live price feed can act on stale data if that feed stalls for a few seconds, and a failed internet connection at your end does not stop orders already placed. We monitor our systems, but no software is free of faults and no supplier of infrastructure is available all of the time.

What to do: check the dashboard regularly, keep alerts switched on and contact support at once if something looks wrong.

Criminals target crypto holders with fake websites, messages and calls designed to steal logins. Someone who gets into your account or your exchange can place trades or move funds.

Common routes are emails and texts that imitate a bank or an exchange, search adverts that lead to a copy of a login page, and calls from someone claiming to be from "the security team" who asks you to read out a code. Reusing a password that has leaked from another website is just as dangerous.

What to do: use two-factor sign-in, a unique password, and read the Security and Fraud warning pages.

An algorithm learns from the past, and markets change. A strategy that worked last quarter may stop working, and automated systems can repeat a mistake quickly. Automation removes effort, not risk, and no model can guarantee a result.

A strategy tuned to a calm market can lose steadily when conditions turn rough, and a set of rules that look sensible in a back-test may be fitted too closely to the past. Automatic systems also carry out a mistaken rule faster and more often than a person would.

What to do: review strategy reports, start with a small amount and be ready to pause the strategy.

The platform may be unavailable for maintenance or after a technical fault. While it is unavailable you may be unable to change settings, and open positions may remain exposed to the market.

Planned maintenance is announced in advance where possible, but faults arrive without warning, and the busiest market moments are often when systems are under most strain. Exchanges, which we do not run, can also be unavailable independently of us.

What to do: keep access to your exchange account, so that you can manage positions directly if you need to.