Overview
Leverage lets you open a position bigger than the margin in your wallet. Atomic supports 1x to 20x on every listed market. The borrowed portion comes from the lending pool and is repaid automatically when you close.
Margin is isolated per position. The collateral you commit at entry is the only capital exposed to that trade; the rest of your wallet stays untouched. The higher the leverage, the closer the liquidation price sits to your entry - see Liquidations for how that threshold is set.
Pick a leverage. Pick a margin. The protocol borrows the rest and writes a liquidation price at entry. That's the number to watch.
How leverage works
When you apply leverage, the protocol borrows the rest of the notional on your behalf the moment the position opens. The loan sits against your position; closing repays it in the same transaction.
A 10x trade on $100 margin, for example:
Margin: 100 USDC.e Leverage: 10x Position size: 1,000 USDC.e Borrowed: 900 USDC.e (from the lending pool) Repayment: automatic on close
You don't interact with the lending pool directly. There's no borrow fee on an open position - only the 10 bps open and 10 bps close trading fees. See Fees & funding.
Why isolated margin
Atomic uses isolated margin rather than a cross-margin pool. Each position is its own envelope:
- Margin is locked at entry and tied to that trade alone.
- The liquidation threshold is computed once, against that envelope.
- A losing position can't pull collateral from your other open trades or from the rest of your wallet.
The trade-off is rigidity. You can't add margin to a live position, and you can't pull margin out of one. If you want more buffer, close the position and reopen at lower leverage.
Margin is set at entry. Topping up or pulling collateral from an open position isn't supported - it's the cost of the isolated model.
Per-market limits
Every listed market currently supports the full 20x. There is no minimum position size. The current list of pairs is on the trading pairs page; if listings change, the caps can be adjusted per asset based on the routable liquidity behind it.
A 10x position is liquidated by an 8.8% adverse move. A 20x position by 4.4%. Look at the liquidation price on the order panel before you sign; if it sits inside the day's normal range, the position is too aggressive.