Leverage is a division, not a setting
The multiple your exchange lets you select is a cap, not a description. What you are actually running is position value ÷ margin. Choose 20× on the venue but only commit half the margin the position needs and you are at 10×; commit a quarter and you are at 40×. The number that matters is the one the arithmetic gives, not the one in the dropdown.
The line worth reading twice
"A 1% move against you costs X% of margin" is the whole of leverage in one sentence. At 10× a 1% move costs 10% of your margin. At 25× it costs a quarter of it. At 50× a 2% wobble — an ordinary hour in crypto — takes the position.
That is also why the liquidation gap shrinks faster than intuition suggests. At 10× you have roughly 9.5% of room; at 20× about 4.5%; at 50× about 1.5%. Doubling leverage more than halves your margin for error, because the maintenance requirement is subtracted from an ever-smaller starting cushion.
Questions people ask
Does leverage increase my risk per trade?
Only if you let it change your position size — which is usually exactly what it does. Leverage by itself just reduces the capital parked as margin. It becomes dangerous when it is used to hold a position larger than the account could otherwise carry, at which point the stop distance and the liquidation distance start competing. Size from risk first with the position size calculator, then see what leverage that implies.
Isolated or cross margin?
This assumes isolated: the position can only lose the margin assigned to it. Under cross margin the whole balance is collateral, so liquidation is further away but a bad enough move takes the account rather than the trade. The number here is the conservative one.
What about funding costs?
Not included. Perpetual funding is charged every few hours and is paid out of margin, so a leveraged position held for days drifts towards liquidation even in a flat market. At high leverage that drift is not a rounding error.