Risk disclosure

Crypto-asset prices can rise or fall sharply within minutes, driven by news, sentiment, large orders or events in other markets. A position that looks safe in the morning can lose a large share of its value by the afternoon, and a loss can be permanent.

For example, a news report about a regulator or an exchange can cut the price of an asset by a tenth within an hour, and the recovery, if there is one, may take weeks or never come.

What you can do: decide before you start how much you can lose without it hurting you, and never commit more than that.

Liquidity is how easily an asset can be bought or sold without moving its price. When few people are trading, an order can take longer to fill or fill at a worse price than expected, a difference known as slippage. This is most common in fast markets and with smaller assets.

For example, when everyone rushes to sell at once, an order that would normally fill at one price can fill at several worse ones, so the average price you receive is lower than the one you saw on screen.

What you can do: favour larger, widely traded assets, and be realistic about the price you will actually receive.

To trade for you, the platform connects to your exchange account through an API key. Connections can fail, settings can be entered wrongly, and keys can be exposed if they are stored carelessly or given too many permissions. A misconfigured key can also stop the platform from seeing your real balance.

For example, a key pasted into the wrong place, or saved in an unprotected file, can be found and used by someone else. That is why we say which permissions to allow, and which to leave off.

What you can do: give keys read and trade permission only, keep withdrawal permission off, and delete a key as soon as you stop using it.

Your assets are held by exchanges and payment providers that are separate from AvenQuant. If one of them is hacked, suspends withdrawals, changes its rules or becomes insolvent, you may be unable to access your funds or may lose them. We do not control those firms and cannot guarantee their conduct.

For example, an exchange that halts withdrawals during a busy period can leave you unable to move your assets when you most want to. Your money at that point is only as safe as the exchange.

What you can do: use exchanges you have researched, and do not leave more on any single platform than you need.

Software has bugs, servers fail and internet connections drop. A technical fault at our end, at an exchange or at your provider can delay an order, block one or leave a position open longer than intended. Even careful testing cannot rule this out.

For example, a routine update at an exchange can break the connection to your account for a few hours, during which strategies cannot place or cancel orders.

What you can do: check your dashboard regularly, and contact support at once if something looks wrong.

People who hold crypto-assets are frequent targets for fraud. Fake websites and messages try to steal passwords, codes and keys, and once funds are moved out of an account they are very hard to recover. Fraudsters sometimes copy our name, as the Fraud warning explains.

For example, an email that looks like it comes from us, asking you to "confirm your account" on a page that copies ours, is designed to collect your password. We never send that kind of request.

What you can do: switch on two-factor sign-in, use a unique password and follow the steps on our Security page.

The platform uses models and automated strategies that look for patterns in past and current data. Models are simplifications. They can be wrong, can stop working when market behaviour changes and can react to a pattern that turns out to be noise. There is no guarantee that any strategy will produce a profit, or that it will keep working.

For example, a strategy tuned to calm, trending markets can lose repeatedly when prices swing sideways, and the same signal that worked for months can suddenly stop working.

What you can do: understand what each strategy is meant to do, review results often and pause it if it no longer fits your plan.

The platform may be unavailable during maintenance, upgrades or an outage. When that happens strategies may not run, and you may not be able to view your account or place a manual instruction. Our own risk pause, which stops trading in disorderly markets, can also mean that you miss a favourable move.

For example, if the platform is offline for maintenance during a sudden price fall, you may be unable to change a strategy until it returns.

What you can do: do not rely on being able to act at a specific minute, and keep your manager's contact details to hand.