Is a crypto trading bot safe?

It depends entirely on how it's built and what you let it do. Here are six questions to ask any bot, including ours, before you connect it to your money.

1. Can it withdraw my money?

It should not be able to. The safest bots can only place and cancel trades. Nicholas: it can trade, but it cannot deposit, withdraw or move money anywhere. Alpaca doesn't offer that permission to it at all.

2. Do I hand over my password or API keys?

Sharing a password is a red flag. Pasting secret API keys into a website means trusting them to store those keys safely. Nicholas: you approve it on Alpaca's own sign-in page (OAuth), and you can revoke access from your Alpaca dashboard any time.

3. Where does my money live?

Some services pool your money in their own account. Nicholas: your money stays in your own Alpaca account, in your name.

4. What stops a bad day from becoming a disaster?

Look for hard limits: a stop-loss on every trade, a cap per coin, and a circuit breaker. Nicholas: all three. Max 15% per coin, a stop on every position, and a breaker that halts new buys after a bad day and won't reset itself.

5. Are the results honest?

Be wary of screenshots of huge gains, and of anyone who promises returns. Ask: are results shown after fees? Were they tested on data the bot never saw? Nicholas: every engine is tested after fees on unseen data, and we say plainly that nothing has shown a reliable profit with real money yet.

6. Can I practise first?

A trustworthy bot lets you watch it with pretend money before risking anything. Nicholas: it always starts on a paper account.