Liquidation is the price where the exchange closes your leveraged trade so you cannot lose more than you posted. Think of margin as a deposit. When losses eat that deposit down to the venue’s cushion — they call that cushion maintenance margin — they close you. A stop loss is you leaving. Liquidation is them leaving for you.
The number
What the number on the screen means
If you are long Bitcoin and the liquidation price is $90,000, then a fall to about $90,000 is where the exchange takes the trade away. You do not get to “wait for a bounce” after that fill. The remaining wallet should not go negative; that was the point of the fuse. On a short, liquidation sits above the market: the coin rallied enough to eat the margin.
The word “liquidation” also means a store selling furniture. In this guide it only means the futures fuse. That is why the title says crypto.
Not the same
Liquidation is not your stop
You pick a stop because the trade idea is wrong. The exchange picks liquidation because the account cannot support the loss. If your stop is tighter than liquidation, you should exit first. If you skip a stop and the market gaps, you may never get the chance — the fuse hits instead.
The exchange’s fuse is not the stop you chose. Place your stop closer to entry than liquidation, so you leave first.
Room to move
Why leverage shrinks the room
Leverage is borrowing power. Ten times leverage does not mean “ten times profit guaranteed.” It means you posted less margin for the same size, so a smaller move against you uses that margin up. The liquidation price moves closer to the market. The leverage calculator shows how much margin a size needs. This page is the fuse that follows.
Two wallets
Isolated vs cross, without the jargon hangover
Isolated means only the money on that one trade can be wiped. The rest of the futures wallet stays. Cross means the venue can pull more from that wallet to keep the trade alive — and can take more if it still fails. Isolated is easier to reason about when you are learning. Cross can hide how close the fuse is.
A read
A worked read
You long Bitcoin at $100,000 with isolated margin. The screen shows liquidation at $94,000. That is a 6% fall. If you cannot stand a 6% dip ending the trade, the size or the leverage is too large — before you need a calculator to tell you. If you can stand it, still place a stop you chose, above that fuse, so you exit on your terms.
Checked August 2026
Maintenance margin tiers differ by exchange and by position size. Binance, Bybit, and others change those tables. The calculator uses named presets; the fill that closes you is still theirs.
Check yours
How to check yours
Use the liquidation price calculator with your entry, side, leverage, and the venue preset. Then compare it to the number on the exchange. If they disagree, trust the exchange for the live trade and treat ours as a second opinion on the math.
Size the loss you can stand first — how much to risk on one trade — then position size. Liquidation is the last number, not the first.