Title: UX-Enabled Misrepresentation: Design Practices and Informed Consent Failures under Swiss Law
Author: Joe L. White, Jr.
Date: July 01, 2025
Reference: Conciliation Request – Nexo AG, Canton of Zug
Purpose
This annex presents the claim that Nexo AG’s platform design constituted a form of negligent misrepresentation. Through dark patterns, omission of essential financial controls, and visual emphasis on yield over risk, users were misled about the true risk profile of their accounts. This aligns with legal standards under FinSA Articles 8–12 and ZGB Art. 28 (protection of personality).
Factual Background
The Nexo platform presented itself as a user-friendly application for managing digital assets.
The claimant used the Nexo platform under the impression that it functioned similarly to a traditional savings or secured lending product. However:
- No real-time loan-to-value (LTV) metrics were visible;
- No automated stop-loss or liquidation alert systems were provided;
- No margin dashboards or de-risking tools were offered during key volatility periods;
During a prolonged market downturn, I was unaware that my positions were under threat of liquidation until after the fact. No real-time dashboards, alerts, or options to hedge or de-risk were visibly available. Additionally, standard financial platform features such as automated sell limits, liquidation ladders, or warning triggers were either missing or opaque.
Claimant Perspective
As a retirement-age investor with no exposure to leveraged products and a risk-averse profile, I interpreted the interface as offering bank-like protection and custodial asset stability. The absence of visible risk tools prevented informed behavior, violating FinSA suitability and appropriateness duties.
The platform’s simplified visuals, emphasis on interest earnings, and lack of granular risk tools gave a false sense of control and stability. This absence of standard margin safeguards created a misleading environment, particularly damaging to clients unfamiliar with margin mechanics.
Had I known my positions were being leveraged and that I had no tools to monitor or mitigate that exposure, I would never have committed my retirement savings to such a platform.
Supporting Evidence or Reasoning
- UX/Platform Audit Evidence: Interface lacked configurable stop-loss, LTV visibility, or margin tools;
- Dark Pattern Design: Interface emphasized yield while concealing structural risk, violating transparency duties;
- Behavioral Economics: Platform induced false confidence through omission bias;
- Legal Basis: Swiss courts acknowledge that design can contribute to contractual misrepresentation (see BGE 133 III 97);
- FinSA and Code of Obligations (CO): Require fair, intelligible risk communication (FinSA Arts. 8, 10–12; CO Art. 2 and 8).
Statement of Intent
This annex is submitted in support of a good-faith civil conciliation request under ZPO Art. 202–204. The claimant asserts that the conduct described herein warrants regulatory attention and damages due to misrepresentation and unsupervised financial intermediation. No proprietary platform information is disclosed, and all references are based on claimant usage, public materials, and industry guidelines.
Disclaimer
This document is submitted in good faith, based solely on the claimant’s personal experience and publicly available facts. No confidential or privileged information has been disclosed. All statements reflect the claimant’s beliefs or recollections unless otherwise indicated. Names of third parties are anonymized or redacted where not publicly implicated. The purpose of this release is transparency, accountability, and resolution not defamation or harm.
Legal Context Note
This annex was authored solely by the claimant as part of a lawful civil conciliation filing under Articles 202–204 of the Swiss Civil Procedure Code (ZPO). It does not contain any confidential statements made during the conciliation hearing, nor does it disclose settlement terms or other protected materials governed by ZPO Art. 205.
The annex is based exclusively on:
- Personal experience,
- Publicly available information, or
- Facts the claimant is legally entitled to share.
Its purpose is to document the legal and factual basis for the claimant’s grievance, promote transparency, and serve the public interest where legal oversight may be insufficient.
The annex adheres to Swiss privacy and defamation standards under ZGB Art. 28, the Data Protection Act (DSG), and applicable banking/professional secrecy provisions (BankG, StGB Art. 321).
It is not an official court document, and no information disclosed herein was obtained through the hearing process.