Venues advertise a headline maximum leverage. That figure applies to positions below a threshold. Above it, the maximum falls in tiers, and maintenance margin rises with each one.
The reason is the venue’s own risk: a large position is harder to unwind without moving the market, so it demands a bigger buffer.
The consequence people meet by surprise
Scaling into a position can cross a tier boundary. When it does, the maintenance requirement on the whole position rises, which brings the liquidation price closer — even though you added margin along with the size.
So adding to a winner can increase fragility. That is counter-intuitive enough to be worth stating plainly, and it is the mechanism referenced in where your liquidation price sits.
Why it varies by coin
Tiers are set against the venue’s ability to liquidate into that coin’s book. A major with deep liquidity gets generous tiers; a thin altcoin gets tight ones and a low absolute cap.
Which means the same nominal leverage is a different risk across coins, and the venue has already priced that difference into the rules. Reading the tier table for a coin is a fast, free read on how liquid the venue thinks it is.
Position limits
Beyond the tiers there is usually a hard cap on notional. Hitting it is uncommon for retail and it matters for anyone sizing against a venue’s open interest: it bounds how concentrated any single participant can be, which is a floor under how bad a single-account cascade can get.
The check
Read the tier table before sizing, not after. It is published, it is specific to the coin and the venue, and it changes the arithmetic of a position you have already decided on.