Getting started: your first four steps

What this guide is for

This page walks you through everything between "I have registered" and "my first strategy is running". By the end of it you will have a verified account, a connected exchange, analysis settings you understand, and a dashboard you know how to read. Nothing here requires prior trading experience: every step explains what you are doing and why it matters, and your personal manager can do any part of it with you on a call. Keep this page open on your phone during setup if that is easier; it is written to be followed in order.

Plan for about an hour spread over a day or two: registration takes minutes, verification usually completes within one business day of clear documents, and the remaining steps are short once verification clears. You can stop at any point and continue later; nothing expires mid-setup.

Step 1: Register your account

Start at the registration form on the Create Account page (or the form on the home page). Fill in your first name, surname, telephone number and email address, and choose a strong password. Use a phone number you can answer during business hours: your personal manager will call it within 24 hours on business days, and that call is the fastest route through everything that follows.

Choose a password you have not used anywhere else, ideally generated and stored by a password manager. During verification, and before your first deposit, enable two-factor authentication with an authenticator app; the prompts appear automatically and take under two minutes. Print or write down the backup codes and keep them somewhere that is not your phone. These two habits, a unique password and a second factor, prevent the overwhelming majority of account takeovers before they start, as described on the Security page.

Checklist for step 1

  • Registration form completed with accurate details
  • Unique password stored in a password manager
  • Two-factor authentication enabled
  • Backup codes printed and stored offline
  • Phone answered or callback arranged for the manager's call

Step 2: Connect a crypto exchange

AfriSynapse executes through major exchanges, so your next step is linking an account on one of them: Binance, Bybit, OKX, Crypto.com or KuCoin. Open the exchange's own website or app, complete its verification if you have not already, and generate an API key from its API settings page. Give the key read and trade permissions only: never enable the withdrawal permission, for our connection or any other, and never share the key itself with anyone, including people claiming to be from our team.

Paste the key into the connection screen in your AfriSynapse account settings and give the connection a name you will recognise later. Restrictions matter here: a read-and-trade key lets our tools monitor prices and execute strategy instructions, while leaving withdrawals impossible from that key by design. If a key ever needs replacing, disable the old one first, then create and connect the new one, so there is never a window where two keys are live. The full security detail lives on the Security page, section 7.

Checklist for step 2

  • Exchange account verified on the official domain
  • API key created with read and trade permissions only
  • Withdrawal permission explicitly disabled on the key
  • Key connected in AfriSynapse account settings
  • Old keys rotated out if you have replaced any

Step 3: Set up your analysis and monitoring

Now tell the platform what to watch. Choose the trading pairs you want monitored, such as the crypto assets on our Cryptocurrencies page or the share themes on the Shares page, and set the conditions that matter to you: which patterns should trigger attention, how much market noise to filter, and what should count as unusual volatility. Sensible defaults are provided for every setting, and you can begin with those and refine later; the defaults are deliberately conservative rather than aggressive.

Turn on the notifications you will actually read: a weekly summary email, alerts for significant strategy events, and security alerts for new devices. Monitoring runs continuously once configured, including the hours you are asleep, and the volatility circuit breakers described on the Risk Disclosure page can pause activity when conditions become unstable. Your dashboard shows what is being watched and why, so the monitoring is never a black box.

Checklist for step 3

  • Trading pairs and conditions selected, defaults accepted or tuned
  • Volatility and noise thresholds reviewed with your manager
  • Weekly summary and alert emails switched on
  • Security notifications left enabled
  • Strategy candidates reviewed before funding

Step 4: Review and manage from your dashboard

After your first deposit clears, the dashboard becomes your home screen. Its main functions: an overview of balance and open positions in rand; performance summaries per strategy with fees shown separately; the activity feed of what the system did and when; the audit history of changes to your settings; and the controls for pausing a strategy, adjusting its risk level or requesting a withdrawal. Everything is laid out in plain language, and the reporting glossary explains any term at the point it appears.

Managing well means checking in rather than watching constantly. Most users do a weekly read of the summary, a monthly read of the detailed report, and immediate reads whenever an alert arrives. When you want a change, make it from the dashboard itself so it lands in the audit history: verbal or emailed change requests are logged by us too, but the dashboard is the source of truth. Withdrawals follow the timelines on the Deposit and Withdrawal page and the rules in the Withdrawal Policy.

Checklist for step 4

  • Dashboard overview understood: balance, positions, activity
  • Weekly summary email scheduled and read
  • Strategy pause and risk controls located
  • Withdrawal flow tested with a small amount if you want certainty
  • Personal manager's contact details saved

Important notes before your first strategy runs

No assurance of profit. Every tool on this platform, including the AI analysis and the ready-made strategies from experienced traders, can produce losses in any given period. Past performance, including the track record shown for a strategy, is not a reliable indicator of future results, and the illustrative figures from the calculator on the home page are modelling, not forecasting.

Market risk is yours to size. Decide the maximum you would accept to lose before you deposit, and keep your working balance at or below that figure. The Risk Disclosure page explains market, liquidity, counterparty, operational and model risks in detail, with a practical step for each. Read it once properly; it is the most valuable page on this site.

Your decisions stay yours. Automation executes your parameters; it does not replace your judgement. You choose what runs, at what risk level, and for how long, and you can pause everything from the dashboard at any time. Your personal manager explains and advises, but the decisions, and their outcomes, belong to you.

Recommended next pages

  • Crypto basics and why people invest, if the asset class is new to you: plain-language explanations of what cryptocurrencies are, what moves their prices and what volatility means.
  • Fees and pricing, for the tier minimums and the full fee tables in rand, so nothing on a statement surprises you.
  • Security, for the account protections summarised in step 1 and how incident support works.
  • FAQ, for the questions new users actually ask, grouped by topic.
  • Articles, for short reads on trading mistakes, manual versus automated trading and trader psychology.