This article addresses our spot margin offering. Learn more about Coinbase’s spot margin experience.
Margin trading is high risk and is not suitable for everyone. Leverage amplifies losses as well as gains, and you could lose all of your collateral, or more. If your margin reaches the liquidation threshold, we may sell your collateral without further notice. Depending on where you live, margin loans may be unregulated, with no regulatory recourse. Before you start, read the spot margin risk disclosures and who provides your spot margin services.
Liquidation can begin when your margin balance no longer covers the maintenance margin requirement. The liquidation engine attempts to reduce risk by reducing or closing positions. Liquidation does not guarantee that losses will stop before your balance becomes negative.
Trading with leverage amplifies both profits and losses which can lead to liquidation if the market rapidly turns against your position.
View margin health
Margin health shows how close your positions are to liquidation. If a position reaches 100%, your collateral is sold to repay your loans.
To view margin health:
Advanced: Access your margin portfolio.
To reduce your liquidation risk and keep your margin healthy, add funds to your margin portfolio or repay part or all of your loan.
The Margin details widget includes the following information. The fields shown depend on your account.
Equity | Your total account value. All balances minus any borrows. |
Balance | The total value of all assets in your margin portfolio, including funds from borrowing. |
Borrow | The total amount you have borrowed against your margin collateral. |
Initial margin / Initial margin (IM) | The collateral required to open your current positions, shown as an amount and a % share of your margin balance. Reaching 100% will prevent you from opening new positions. |
Maintenance margin / Maintenance margin (MM) | The minimum collateral required to keep positions open, shown as an amount and a % share of your margin balance. Reaching 100% will result in liquidation. |
Margin health | Healthy: 0-79.99% Warning: 80.00-89.99% Danger: 90.00-99.99% Liquidated: 100.00% |
Available margin | Funds available for trading. This balance does not include funds already held for initial margin. |
Effective leverage | The true leverage ratio on your margin account, calculated as borrow amount divided by total equity. |
Alerts
Depending on your settings, you may receive a push, in-app, and/or email notification when your margin health is poor and when a liquidation happens.
IM Breach: You have breached initial margin, sent at 100% initial margin ratio. At this point, we have cancelled all risk increasing orders and you can only place orders that will reduce risk.
Warning: Your margin health is close to liquidation, sent at 80% maintenance margin ratio.
Danger: You're very close to liquidation, sent at 90% maintenance margin ratio.
Liquidation: Liquidation has been triggered, sent at 100% maintenance margin ratio.
Emails don't include your loan details. Visit your Margin hub for loan details.
The liquidation process
Liquidation is triggered when your margin ratio reaches 100%.
Liquidation is incremental. We will incrementally liquidate until your account reaches a healthy state.
Your collateral is sold to repay your loans.
The repayment is applied automatically.
A 1% liquidation fee applies.
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