When you use margin trading, a practice where you borrow funds from a crypto exchange to increase your position size. Also known as leveraged trading, it lets you control more crypto than your actual balance allows—but it also multiplies your losses. This isn’t fantasy finance. It’s a tool used by professionals and amateurs alike, and if you don’t understand how it works, you’re just gambling with borrowed money.
Margin trading requires collateral, the crypto you put up as security to borrow more. If the market moves against you, the exchange can automatically sell your position to cover the loan—that’s called liquidation, the forced closing of a leveraged trade when your collateral drops too low. You don’t need to be wrong by much. A 10% dip in a 5x leveraged trade wipes out your entire stake. In 2025, over 60% of new traders who tried margin trading lost more than half their account within 30 days—not because they picked bad coins, but because they didn’t understand how leverage eats capital.
Most people think margin trading is about making big gains fast. But the real story is about risk control. The same platforms that offer 100x leverage on meme coins also have systems that shut down accounts overnight. You’ll see this in posts about margin trading on exchanges like Upbit and TradeOgre—where regulators stepped in because users kept losing money faster than exchanges could handle the fallout. Even solid DeFi protocols like KyberSwap and Shadow Exchange don’t change the math: higher leverage = higher chance of total loss.
You don’t need to trade on margin to make money in crypto. But if you’re thinking about it, you need to know what happens when the price moves just 5% against you. You need to know how liquidation triggers work. You need to understand why some traders lose everything in minutes while others use small leverage to manage risk. The posts below show real cases—how people got wiped out, how exchanges reacted, and what you can do differently. No fluff. No hype. Just what actually happens when you borrow crypto to bet on its price.
Margin trading in crypto can multiply profits but also wipe out your account. Learn how leverage works, why most traders lose, and how to trade safely without getting liquidated.