Crypto · Managing crypto risk · lesson 9 of 9 · 6 min read · David Alexander
The crypto risk plan on one page
the crypto risk plan
The one-page plan for the platform's most volatile, least-anchored, most-fragmented market: the budget and the volatility-sized position, the stop sized for the cascade, the custody split, the counterparty and stablecoin caps, the total-crypto exposure limit, and the self-imposed day. It carries every discipline the other plans did, plus two the other markets never needed: custody and counterparty, because here the exchange itself is a risk and the holder is their own bank.
Sixth risk plan, most demanding market. Crypto's plan carries the full inheritance and adds the two risks unique to an asset that lives on a ledger among unregulated venues.
The crypto risk plan
- Risk per trade: fixed fraction, in money - the anchor through six asset classes.
- Size: volatility-sized against a wide honest stop, floorless and exact - lesson 2 - and against a plausible cascade distance where the stop can be jumped, lesson 3.
- The custody split: the bulk cold, a capped trading float on venues - lesson 6, the plan's spine.
- The counterparty caps: per venue and total on-venue, sized as the positions they are - lesson 5; and the stablecoin cap, per issuer - lesson 8.
- Total crypto exposure: capped as one bet, because the correlation is to one - lesson 7; within-crypto allocation is a tilt, not a hedge.
- The leverage line: for those who can access it, liquidation prices computed and the funding meter budgeted - lesson 4 and module 3; for UK retail, the line reads 'spot only', per the FCA position stated throughout.
- The self-imposed day: the chosen mark, sessions and off-hours - module 1's authored structure, because no bell will ring.
What is deliberately absent, sixth telling
No coin views, no price targets, no conviction scale, no narrative bets dressed as analysis. The plan works identically whether the coins moon or collapse - the sentence has survived six asset classes, and crypto tests it hardest because its narratives are the loudest invitation to abandon it. Risk management is the machinery that keeps the account alive through the volatility the marketing sells as opportunity.
The two crypto-specific lines
Every other plan managed market risk; crypto's adds custody risk and counterparty risk, because this is the only asset class where the holder is their own bank and the exchange is a sized position. Those two lines - the split and the caps - are crypto's contribution to the platform's risk machinery, and they exist because module 1's opening truth is load-bearing: not your keys, not your coins, and not your solvent exchange, not your balance. Module 5 turns to analysing an asset that has no fundamentals to analyse - which, in crypto, is its own honest lesson.
Check your understanding
Question 1 of 2
What two risks does the crypto plan add that no other market's plan needed?