The only formula you need
A leveraged position has an entry price and a bust price. The distance between them is not a matter of judgement or a risk setting — it falls out of arithmetic. Your stake covers a fixed amount of loss; leverage decides how quickly the market spends it.
A position of stake S at leverage L controls a notional of S × L. A price move of m percent moves that notional by S × L × m. When that product equals your stake, the stake is gone. Set them equal and L cancels out of everything except one place:
So the ladder is not a difficulty setting. It is a distance setting, and the distances are brutal at the top end:
| BOOST | MOVE THAT BUSTS YOU | ON A $64,000 BTC |
|---|---|---|
| ×2 | 50.0% | $32,000 |
| ×5 | 20.0% | $12,800 |
| ×10 | 10.0% | $6,400 |
| ×25 | 4.0% | $2,560 |
| ×100 | 1.0% | $640 |
| ×1000 | 0.1% | $64 |
Read the bottom row again. At ×1000 on Bitcoin, sixty-four dollars of movement ends the position. Bitcoin routinely travels that far in under a minute on an unremarkable afternoon.
What leverage does not do
It does not improve your odds of being right. If you have no edge in guessing direction, you have no edge at ×2 and no edge at ×1000. Leverage multiplies the size of the outcome, not the probability of a good one.
It does not make the game unfair, either — this is worth saying plainly, because the intuition runs the other way. The bust price sits exactly where your stake runs out, symmetrically on both sides. A long at ×100 busts on a 1% fall; a short at ×100 busts on a 1% rise. The house is not choosing that number, arithmetic is.
And it does not put you in debt. This is the structural difference between a leveraged game and a leveraged account at a broker, and it is the part worth understanding before you touch the top of the ladder.
The cost that is not the price
Leverage has a second bill, and it is charged in time rather than in movement. A leveraged position borrows size, and borrowed size accrues funding. On this desk the first hour is free, and past it funding runs at 0.1% per hour — charged on the notional, not on your stake.
That distinction matters enormously at the top of the ladder. A stake of 100 at ×1000 controls a notional of 100,000, so an hour of funding past the grace costs 100 — the entire stake. A position parked at extreme leverage does not need the market to move against it to die; it can simply be billed to death.
How to actually choose a rung
Invert the table. Instead of asking “how much do I want to win”, ask “how much movement do I want to survive”, then read the leverage off that. This is the same decision, framed the way the mechanism actually works.
- Decide the move you want to be wrong about and still be alive — say 2%.
- Divide 1 by it: 1 ÷ 0.02 = 50. That is your ceiling, not your target.
- Sit below the ceiling, because the market does not owe you a smooth path to being right.
The second habit is a stop, set as a percentage of your bet rather than a price. “Close me if I am down 50% of my stake” is a decision you can actually make; “close me at $63,987.20” is a number you have to compute under pressure. The desk converts the first into the second at order time.
The desk, explainedDirection, boost, and the bust price shown before you commitBTC ×1000 →
What move liquidates a ×1000 position?
A move of 0.1% against you. The liquidation distance is always 1 ÷ leverage, so ×1000 busts on a tenth of a percent — about $64 on a $64,000 Bitcoin.
Can I lose more than I put in?
No. Realized loss is floored at the stake in the settlement code itself, so a gap or a crash through your bust price still costs you exactly what you opened with and nothing more.
Does higher leverage improve my chances?
No. It changes the size of the outcome and the distance the price may travel first. The probability of being right about direction is unchanged, which is why extreme leverage shortens the average life of a position rather than improving it.
Why did my position close when the price barely moved?
Two possibilities: the move was larger relative to your leverage than it looked in dollar terms, or funding consumed the margin. Past the first hour, funding is charged on notional, and at high leverage the notional is large enough to exhaust a stake on its own.
- Betkyo engine source: CryptoProEngine liqPriceOf(), fundingFeeOf() and settle() — every figure in this article is read from those functions
