General warning. The past performance of any strategy, algorithm or market does not predict future results. No part of this platform guarantees profits or capital preservation, and nothing on this site should be read as investment advice.
Market risk
Prices move, sometimes violently, and positions lose value when they move against you.
Liquidity risk
Orders do not always execute at the price you see.
API and integration risk
Automated trading depends on connections that can fail.
Counterparty risk
Funds held by third parties carry those third parties' risk.
Operational risk
Software and infrastructure can fail at the worst moment.
Cyber risk
Accounts attract attacks; protection is layered but never absolute.
1. Introduction: risk is part of the deal
Each section below follows the same pattern: what the risk is and one practical step that reduces it. No step eliminates risk; nothing does. The goal is to trade with open eyes: understand what can go wrong, decide how much of that you can afford, and never fund an account with money you need for rent, food or debts.
2. Market risk
Crypto markets are volatile: double-digit moves in a day happen, and events (regulatory news, exchange incidents, macroeconomic data) can reprice assets within minutes. An automated strategy follows its rules mechanically, which limits panic but not losses: if the market moves against an open position, the loss is real, with or without automation.
What helps: set your account's risk limits before you start, size positions so a bad day is survivable, and remember that leverage, where used, multiplies losses just as it multiplies gains.
3. Liquidity risk
Liquidity is how easily an asset can be bought or sold without moving its price. In thin markets, an order fills partially or at a visibly worse price than expected: the difference is called slippage. In fast moves liquidity can vanish: the exit you see on the chart may not exist at the size you need.
What helps: prefer strategies on liquid assets during volatile periods, and treat backtests that ignore slippage with scepticism.
4. API and integration risks
Automated trading runs on API connections to exchanges. Connections drop, exchanges throttle or pause their services, keys expire, and a misconfigured permission can disable a strategy silently. An interruption mid-position leaves the strategy blind exactly when decisions matter.
What helps: create API keys without withdrawal permission, verify permissions after any exchange maintenance, and check the platform's connection status after installing updates.
5. Counterparty risk and custody of funds
Trading happens with third parties: exchanges, liquidity providers, payment processors. Each carries its own risk: an exchange can be hacked, freeze withdrawals or fail. Where funds are held by a counterparty, that counterparty's problems become yours, no matter how well the strategy performed.
What helps: keep only your working balance on trading platforms, withdraw profits regularly, and read the withdrawal policy before you need it.
6. Operational risks
Software has bugs, servers restart, databases fail over and updates break things at 3 a.m. Operational risk is the probability that the machinery of trading, rather than the market, causes the damage: a strategy that held a position open because its stop signal never arrived, or a dashboard showing stale prices.
What helps: strategies include protective stops executed server-side where possible; know how to pause your strategies manually, and treat any unexplained behaviour as a reason to stop, not to wait.
7. Cybersecurity and phishing
Accounts with money attract attackers. The common vectors are phishing pages copying the login screen, "support agents" asking for 2FA codes, and malware reading credentials from the browser. No platform feature compensates for a password handed to the wrong person.
What helps: a unique password used nowhere else, 2FA enabled, sign-in notifications on, and the permanent rule that no legitimate employee will ever ask for your password or codes. The Security page has the full list.
8. Models and automation
The algorithmic models behind strategies are built on historical data. Markets change character: correlations break, volatility regimes shift, and a model that performed well can stop doing so without warning. Automation also removes the human hesitation that sometimes avoids the worst decisions, and that cuts both ways.
What helps: judge strategies by months, not days; diversify across distinct approaches; and treat any result, good or bad, as information, not destiny.
9. Service availability
The platform undergoes maintenance and outages happen despite redundancy: during an outage you may be unable to change settings, pause a strategy or request a withdrawal until service is restored. Exchange-side outages have the same effect even when the platform is up.
What helps: positions carry server-side risk controls that do not depend on your browser being open; subscribe to status notifications if you trade large amounts, and plan changes for calm periods, not during market events.
10. Before you start
Three steps to close. First, understand the strategy you are about to enable: its assets, its risk limits, its historical worst drawdown. Second, decide your maximum acceptable loss in money, not percentages, and set the limits accordingly. Third, protect the account itself: 2FA on, sign-in notifications on, withdrawal permission disabled on API keys. Risk can be managed, and managing it is the difference between trading and gambling.