Skip to main content
Open app

Can you change the leverage on an open perps position, and what does it do to your liquidation price?

· 10 min read
BT365 Team
BlockTrader365

Yes. A perpetual position on Hyperliquid can have its leverage changed while it is open, and BT365 exposes that on every position, on the web and in the app. The thing most people expect to change is the size of the trade. It is not. The size, the side and the margin mode stay exactly what they were. What changes is how much margin backs the position, and on an isolated position that is the same thing as changing how far away the liquidation price is.

This article walks through what BT365 does between the click and the signature, with the formula it uses for the preview, so you can check the number it shows you.

Can you change the leverage on a position that is already open?​

On a position card or a row in the positions table there is a Leverage action. It opens a dialog that shows the current leverage and the market maximum, for example "Current: 10x | Max: 40x", with a slider and an input that only accept whole numbers between 1 and that maximum. The maximum is read from Hyperliquid for that market; if it cannot be read, the range is limited to the current leverage until it can.

Before anything is sent, the backend reads the live position from the exchange. No open position on that market means the request is refused outright. The leverage you asked for has to be an integer between 1 and the market maximum, and it has to differ from the current value; "already at 10x" is a refusal, not a no-op. The margin mode, cross or isolated, is taken from the live position and sent back as it is. Nothing in this path can flip a position from isolated to cross or back.

The change itself is one exchange action, taken under a lock on that account and market so two leverage changes cannot race each other. If a second change arrives while one is in flight, it is told that the first is still processing. Only after the exchange accepts does BT365 write the new leverage to its own record of the position and refresh the margin snapshot it shows you.

Accounts that trade from the owner's own wallet sign the action themselves: the backend prepares it, the wallet signs, the backend submits. Between the preparation and the submit there is a window in which the position can change, so the submit re-reads it under the lock and refuses if the position closed, cannot be read, or changed margin mode while you were signing. Older accounts, where BT365 operates the key on the user's behalf, go through the same plan and the same lock, server-signed.

What actually moves when you change leverage on an open position?​

Margin. On a perpetual, the margin posted against a position is its notional value divided by its leverage. Double the leverage and half the margin is no longer needed; it goes back to your free balance. Halve the leverage and the position needs twice the margin it has, which has to come from your free balance.

BT365's preview computes the amount directly from that definition:

margin moved = size × price / new leverage − size × price / current leverage

The price is the mark price when the exchange reports one, otherwise the entry price. A negative result is shown as "margin freed" and a positive one as "margin locked".

Take a long of 0.1 BTC opened at 100,000 with the mark at 100,000, at 10x. The margin backing it is 0.1 × 100,000 / 10 = 1,000. Move it to 20x and the margin required is 500, so the preview reads "$500.00 margin freed". Move a 20x position down to 10x and the same 500 is locked.

How is the new liquidation price estimated?​

This is the number that matters, and it is the one most interfaces either hide or hand-wave. BT365 estimates it from Hyperliquid's maintenance margin rule and shows its working.

An isolated position is liquidated when the margin remaining in it falls to the maintenance level. On Hyperliquid, maintenance leverage is twice the market's maximum leverage, so the maintenance margin ratio is:

l = 1 / (2 × max leverage)

For a market whose maximum is 40x, l is 1 / 80 = 0.0125. The margin you post at leverage L is 1/L of notional; the distance between that and maintenance is what the price can move against you. For a long the estimate is:

liquidation (long)  = entry × (1 − (1/L − l) / (1 − l))
liquidation (short) = entry × (1 + (1/L − l) / (1 + l))

On the example above at 10x: 1/L − l = 0.1 − 0.0125 = 0.0875, and 0.0875 / 0.9875 = 0.0886, so the long's estimated liquidation is 100,000 × (1 − 0.0886) = 91,139. At 20x: 0.05 − 0.0125 = 0.0375, 0.0375 / 0.9875 = 0.0380, so the estimate is 96,203. The price has to fall 8,861 to liquidate the 10x position and 3,797 to liquidate the 20x one. For a short at 10x the same arithmetic on the other side gives 108,642.

Two things in how BT365 applies this are worth knowing, because they are the difference between an estimate you can trust and one you cannot.

First, the formula ignores the opening fee and any funding already paid, both of which have come out of the margin, so the exchange's real liquidation price is a little closer to entry than the formula says. Rather than show the raw formula, the preview takes the exchange's live liquidation price for the open position and shifts it by the difference between the two estimates. In the example, if the exchange shows 91,300 at 10x, the new estimate is 91,300 + (96,203 − 91,139) = 96,363. Fees and funding stay in the number because they were already in the live figure. It is still labelled an estimate, and the exchange's figure after the change is the one that counts.

Second, when the market maximum cannot be read, the preview assumes it equals the leverage you asked for. That is the largest maintenance ratio the market could have, so the fallback shows liquidation closer to entry than it probably is, never further away. An estimate that errs in your favour would be worse than none.

If the new liquidation price is closer to the current price than the old one, the dialog shows it in the colour it uses for losses. That is the only judgment it makes.

Why can lowering leverage be refused?​

Because lowering leverage locks margin, and the margin has to exist. If your free balance cannot cover the difference, the exchange rejects the change. BT365 maps that rejection to "Not enough free margin to lower leverage to 10x. Add margin or lower it less." and leaves the position as it was.

The exchange can also reject a raise, in which case you see that it was rejected, without the exchange's raw text. One more rejection is specific to Hyperliquid: an account that sends too many requests is paused by the exchange, and the message BT365 shows explains that it accepts one request every 10 seconds until the account trades more, one extra request per dollar traded. Wait ten seconds and try again.

On BT365's side the refusals are the ones above: no open position, leverage outside 1x to the market maximum, leverage unchanged, another change still processing, or a position that changed while you were signing. None of them moves anything.

Does changing leverage switch between cross and isolated margin?​

No. The margin mode comes from the live position and goes back unchanged. On a cross position the dialog says so; on an isolated one it shows the liquidation preview instead.

On a cross position there is no liquidation preview at all. Cross margin backs every open position with the whole account balance, so the liquidation price of one position depends on everything else in the account, and a number computed from that position alone would be fiction. The dialog says so and shows no liquidation figure at all. If you want to understand what a cross account shares, What unified margin actually shares is the longer version.

When not to​

Raising leverage on an open position is the same bet with less margin behind it. The preview tells you how much closer liquidation gets; it does not tell you whether that is wise. If the new liquidation price lands inside the range the market has moved in recently, the honest answer is to leave the leverage where it is, or lower it and lock the margin instead. The dialog will do either. It will not decide for you.

BT365 is not available in every jurisdiction, and nothing on this page is investment advice. Trading perpetual futures and prediction markets carries risk of loss.