Risk disclosure
Introduction and a general warning about trading crypto assets
This page explains, in plain language, the risks that come with using AfriSynapse to trade cryptocurrencies, shares and other financial assets. Automated tools change how much effort trading takes; they do not change what markets can do to your money. Prices of crypto assets in particular can move violently in minutes, and you can lose part or all of the capital you invest. Nothing on this platform, including its AI analysis, volatility controls or the experience of other users, removes that possibility.
Read this page before you make your first deposit, and return to it whenever you increase the amount you trade. If any section is unclear, ask your personal manager to walk you through it before you fund the account. We would rather answer a basic question early than see a user surprised by a basic outcome later. Trading is not suitable for everyone: it suits people who can afford to set money aside and can absorb a loss without it changing their household's stability.
The short version
You can lose money. Sometimes quickly, sometimes fully. Every mechanism described below exists to manage risk, not to remove it. Only trade with money you can genuinely afford to lose.
The eight risks we ask you to understand
Each card explains one risk and ends with a practical step you can take.
1. Market risk: volatility and sharp price moves
Market risk is the simplest and most important risk: the price of what you hold moves against you. Crypto assets are especially volatile, with double-digit percentage moves in a single day being routine, and shares can gap sharply on earnings, ratings changes or global events. Automated strategies follow the market like any other approach, so a broad downturn will typically reduce the value of an open position before any tool can react. Diversification and position limits reduce concentration, but no setting makes a falling market stop falling.
Practical step: decide in advance what percentage loss would make you stop and reassess, write it down, and treat reaching that level as a trigger to act, not a reason to hope.
2. Liquidity risk: order execution and slippage
Liquidity is how easily an asset can be bought or sold near its displayed price. In thin markets or during news shocks, there may not be enough buyers at the price you see on screen, so orders execute at worse prices than expected. This difference is called slippage. It is most common with smaller crypto assets, at market opens, and during sudden moves when many participants try to exit at once. A stop level is also not a promise of the exact price: in fast markets, execution can slip past it.
Practical step: favour assets and times of day with deep liquidity, and treat displayed prices as approximate when the market is moving quickly.
3. APIs and integrations: connection and key security
The platform connects to external exchanges through programming interfaces that pass instructions back and forth. These links can fail, delay or drop messages during internet outages, exchange maintenance or extreme load, and a missed instruction can mean a strategy behaves differently than intended for a period. API keys are also a security item: a key with overly broad permissions that leaks can let a third party trade your account. We request only the permissions a connection needs, as described on the Security page, and you should never generate exchange keys anywhere other than the official exchange site.
Practical step: keep your exchange API keys restricted to trading, never to withdrawals, and report any unexpected connection behaviour to support the moment you notice it.
4. Counterparty risk and where funds are held
Whenever money or assets sit with a third party, that third party's own health becomes part of your risk. Exchanges can suffer outages, security incidents or insolvency, and in a serious failure access to funds held there can be delayed or reduced. Spreading activity across the exchanges listed on our home page reduces dependence on any single venue but does not remove the exposure. This is a structural risk of the asset class rather than a defect of any one provider.
Practical step: keep only the balance you actively trade on connected venues, and withdraw profits you do not need at work to your own bank account in rand.
5. Operational risks: software, infrastructure and connections
Automated trading depends on a chain of working parts: our platform, hosting infrastructure, data feeds, exchange systems and your own internet connection. Any link can fail. Bugs can exist despite testing, servers need restarting, undersea cables get damaged and load-shedding can take your side of the connection offline at a critical moment. When something in the chain breaks, strategies may pause, execute late or miss an intended action entirely. Our systems include redundancy and monitoring, but no operator in this industry can promise zero interruptions.
Practical step: keep your contact details current so we can reach you during an incident, and review your strategy status after any outage on your side rather than assuming nothing changed.
6. Cybersecurity and phishing
Accounts on any financial platform are targets. The most common attacks are not against our systems but against you: emails or messages that imitate AfriSynapse, fake support agents on social media, cloned websites asking you to re-enter your password, and pressure tactics that rush you into approving something. Once credentials or a one-time code are handed over, an attacker can trade or drain an account quickly. We list our official domain and communication rules on the Security page and the Fraud Warning page, and our support team will never ask for your password or a verification code.
Practical step: type our address into your browser rather than following links, enable two-factor authentication, and treat any urgent request for credentials as fraudulent by default.
7. Models and automation: what algorithms cannot do
Our AI looks for patterns and micro-trends based on probability and historical data. Patterns that worked before can stop working, models can be wrong simultaneously across many users, and a strategy that has performed well up to now can produce a losing streak the following month. Automation also acts on rules, not on judgement: it will follow the parameters you set even when a human might hesitate. There is no assurance of profit from any strategy on this platform, ready-made or custom, and past results are not a reliable indicator of future ones.
Practical step: treat every strategy, however strong its track record, as capable of losing money in any given month, and size your exposure accordingly.
8. Service availability: maintenance and downtime
The platform is taken offline briefly for planned maintenance, and longer for unplanned incidents. During these windows you may be unable to view positions, change settings or request actions, while the markets themselves keep moving. Exchange-side outages can similarly block execution at exactly the moment you want to act. We publish maintenance windows in advance where possible and escalate incidents through the process described on the Security page, but availability risk can only be reduced, never eliminated.
Practical step: avoid launching new strategies or changing risk settings minutes before announced maintenance, and contact support through the incident channel if access fails at a critical time.
Before you start: four habits that protect you
Understanding the risks above is the first step; building habits around them is what actually protects your money over a year of trading. These four habits are what our support team repeats most often to new users, and they take very little time once they are part of your routine. Each one addresses a specific risk from the cards above, from market exposure to account security.
- Understand the strategy you are running. Read what a strategy trades, over what time frames, and what its worst observed stretch looked like, before you switch it on. Ask your manager to explain anything vague until it is not vague. If you cannot describe the strategy in two sentences, you are not ready to run it with real money.
- Define the loss level you can accept. Choose a rand amount or a percentage that, if lost, would not change your essential plans, and structure your deposits so that amount is the most you have at work. Write the number down before your first deposit and review it every few months as your circumstances change.
- Protect the account itself. Use a unique password stored in a password manager, enable two-factor authentication, review login alerts, and check the active sessions list on the Security settings after any travel or new device. Account takeover is a loss that no trading strategy can recover.
- Keep monitoring, even with automation. Automatic execution does not mean automatic judgment. Check your dashboard summaries weekly, read the monthly report properly, and pause any strategy whose behaviour you cannot explain. You remain the decision-maker; the platform executes decisions, it does not replace them.
Where to go next
For how we protect accounts technically, read the Security page. For how identity verification reduces fraud, read the AML and KYC page. For getting money out, read the Withdrawal Policy. Questions about any of this go to [email protected], and your personal manager can talk them through on a call.