A liquidation price is the mark-price level at which a leveraged position no longer has enough equity to meet maintenance margin, so the trading venue’s risk engine can forcibly close it.
What the number measures
A leveraged position is a derivative exposure larger than the collateral you post. Initial margin opens it; maintenance margin is the smaller equity buffer required to keep it open. The mark price is the venue’s risk reference—usually an index-based fair price, not the last trade—and unrealized profit and loss is measured against it.
For example, a 1,000 USDT BTC long opened at 50,000 USDT with 20x leverage controls 0.02 BTC. Its 50 USDT initial margin, less 5 USDT of maintenance margin at a hypothetical 0.5% rate, leaves roughly 45 USDT of loss room: a simple estimate is 47,750 USDT. Fees, funding, contract rules and the venue’s mark formula can move the real threshold.
The three checks before opening
Record the contract, collateral, position size, margin mode and maintenance tier, then check:
- Mark price: liquidation may occur even when the last-traded-price chart has not reached the displayed level.
- Margin mode: isolated margin limits the position’s collateral; cross margin shares collateral across positions.
- Risk tier: larger positions can face higher maintenance requirements.
In isolated margin, adding collateral can move liquidation farther away. In cross margin, another losing trade, a withdrawal or a funding payment can move it closer; the account can fail even when that position’s chart has not touched a fixed line.
The important update from 2025 into 2026 is that “leverage sets liquidation” is now an unsafe shortcut. Bybit’s 2025 margin change made mark-price position values and dynamic risk tiers part of cross-margin calculations, while portfolio-margin systems on Bybit and Hyperliquid combine eligible spot and perpetual positions. Portfolio margin may have no meaningful single liquidation price: account risk, correlations and collateral haircuts decide the trigger.
A Universal Bridge moves collateral between networks; it does not move an open position or stop its margin clock.
deBridge Protocol, Across Protocol and IBC Protocol are cross-chain infrastructure examples; they can change where collateral is held and how quickly it arrives, but not the derivatives venue’s maintenance rule.
What you actually end up with
Use the displayed price as an alarm, not a promise. I would rely on it only after checking whether liquidation uses mark price or last trade, whether margin is isolated or shared, how funding and close fees are charged, and whether risk tiers can change. The result is a monitoring threshold—not a guaranteed execution price.
It does not apply to an unleveraged spot purchase, and it is not the price at which you are guaranteed to exit; slippage can make the close worse. If the venue offers no fixed price under portfolio margin, watch its maintenance or margin ratio instead.