Margin, position size and leverage are one equation — set any two and the third follows, along with the distance to liquidation.
Leverage is not a setting to max out — it is the ratio between the position you control and the collateral behind it. The higher it goes, the closer liquidation moves: at 10x the price only needs to travel roughly 10% against you; at 100x, about 1% — inside the random noise of a single candle on most coins.
Serious futures traders rarely run effective leverage above 3-5x on the whole account, even when an exchange offers 100x. High per-trade leverage is mainly a capital-efficiency tool: it lets you lock less margin for the same deliberately-sized position — not a way to multiply the bet.
No. Liquidation is the exchange force-closing you when margin runs out — you lose the whole margin plus liquidation fees. A stop-loss is your own exit at a price you chose. If liquidation is doing the job of your stop, the position was oversized.
Exchanges compute liquidation from the maintenance-margin tier of your exact position size, plus fees, and for isolated vs cross margin differently. The distance formula here is the standard approximation for an isolated position and lands very close for typical sizes.
Free, no signup, runs entirely in your browser. Educational tool — not financial advice. Practice the setup risk-free on the MarginPad paper-trading terminal before putting real money behind it.