Crypto Futures Orders: Market, Limit and Conditional Orders
Understand futures order execution, post-only and reduce-only instructions. Check unfilled orders, taker fees and the difference between triggering and filling.
BEGINNER GUIDE
What are crypto perpetual futures?
A perpetual futures contract is a derivatives product designed to track an underlying crypto market without a fixed expiry date. Exchanges use mechanisms such as funding and mark price to manage the relationship between the perpetual contract and the reference market.
Understand orders, margin and liquidation
Connect the displayed numbers to execution rules and the limits of public calculations.
Crypto Futures Margin: Isolated, Cross and Maintenance Margin
Compare isolated, cross and portfolio margin. Understand initial and maintenance requirements with a hypothetical calculation and account-specific limits.
Crypto Futures Liquidation: Mark Price, Stops and Estimates
Learn why chart and liquidation prices differ, why stops may not prevent liquidation, and how to investigate a liquidation using account records.
The short answer
Unlike a dated futures contract, a perpetual contract normally has no scheduled expiry. A trader can hold a position while margin requirements are met, but leverage means adverse price moves can trigger liquidation. Funding payments are exchanged periodically according to the exchange rules and published rate.
1. Mark price is not the same as last traded price
Major derivatives venues publish a mark price separately from the last traded price. The mark price is commonly used in unrealized P&L and liquidation-related logic to reduce the effect of a single abnormal trade. The exact construction differs by exchange, so this site stores the exchange-published mark price instead of inventing a universal formula.
2. Funding is a periodic transfer, not a trading fee
A trading fee is charged for an execution under the exchange fee schedule. Funding is a separate periodic transfer associated with perpetual positions. A positive rate generally means longs pay shorts at the funding event; a negative rate generally reverses that direction. Funding intervals and rate caps can differ by venue and instrument.
3. Leverage changes required margin, not market direction
Ten-times leverage does not make the asset move ten times more. It lets a smaller amount of initial margin control a larger notional position. That also reduces the room available before margin requirements are breached, which is why liquidation risk grows as leverage rises.
4. Maintenance margin can be tiered
Exchanges can apply different maintenance-margin rates and leverage limits as notional exposure grows. For that reason, a liquidation calculator that uses one MMR for every position size can be wrong. HaesunCheck only auto-selects a tier when an official public endpoint exposes the necessary data.
5. Cross margin cannot be reduced to one entry-price formula
In cross or portfolio-style margin modes, wallet balance, other positions, unrealized P&L, collateral haircuts and exchange-specific rules can affect margin health. A public calculator that does not know those account variables should present an estimate, not an “exact liquidation price.”
Before trading, verify these five items
- The contract type and settlement asset.
- Your actual maker/taker rate in the account, not only the public base rate.
- Funding interval and the rate near the funding timestamp.
- Risk tier, maintenance margin and leverage limit for your position size.
- Whether the product is available and permitted in your region.