Bitcoin Forum

If you noticed on exchanges, if you open a position with $250, you can noticed that only $219 position is opened. I will still need to add more money to the position to increase it to $250.

I have noticed this on most exchanges. Why are exchanges doing that? Why not just make it $250 for the person or $250 minus  the trading fee which is not even up to $1.

Really? Have you tried it with a few exchange and you observed the same reduction of the amount you imputed? And the order you are talking about, is it on spot trading or future trading option? If it is on the spot trading option, every coin you are trading has a limite of the decimal that it can accommodate.

Regularly, the exchange am using is bybit for my futures trading and on the future trading option, if am putting an order, it will only deduct the fees, take a look at the picture below, I just tried to take an order on the XRP/USDT futures trade, my balance is $14 but when I clicked on max, you can see the total cost price which is $13.96/$13.97 for the buy/sell orders, they only took out the fees.

https://www.talkimg.com/images/2025/08/12/USv5Pb.jpeg

I have asked this question before answer I have gotten is the margin requirement, it is mostly dependent and varies based on the asset or pair been traded, if a very volatile pair is been traded you will need to have more funds aside as collateral and in this your own case it was around 13% plus your leverage also increases this position because very volatile asset plus hivh leverage usually gets your margin percentage high and this is usually deducted from your position size.

Just like you I usually just increase the position size or leverage ratio but I usually trade a certain leverage ratio so position size increase is usually my best option. Also I think the fees also have its impact too but since your certain of these ones fees then it might be other two options I think

Yes.

I know what you are talking about if it is spot trading. You do not open position in spot but in derivative trading. I am taking about future trading.

I do not agree with this because the collateral you have is the money you used to trade. I mean all the money you used to enter the position. I can still add up to the money to make it $250.

I myself wasn’t agreeing at first because I was doing research after I notice this usually and the answer I usually get is the fact that this money set aside is the margin or some is like a maintenance margin which is deducted by the exchange to actually cover for potential losses. It is this amount that they put aside in case there is ever a margin call or what we call liquidation alert and you fail to meet up or service the liquidation order they close tgs market and simply hold on to the $31 from that your position size as their own in case you run into lose during the trade.

I think I might have used the wrong word but it is a margin deduction which serves as the exchange’s collateral when you lose the trade but it will be return back to you if you didn’t lose or liquidate. You might check up on margin requirements maybe you can understand it better than I do

What coin do you trade?
It seems you slide the whole amount into a full 100%, but the exchange didn't put the whole amount.

$31 is high. I don't know what coin you are trying to trade that makes your maintenance margin high, but the whole thing is just a safety mechanism for trading futures. That's why it didn't put the whole amount you wanted as the initial margin.
But don't worry, the $31 is still yours once you close your position.

Every crypto exchange has this maintenance margin; they have different or have same rules about this but overall it is for your funds safety and part of risk management by the exchange.

Here's the OKX as sample rule here https://www.okx.com/help/v-tiered-maintenance-margin-ratio-rules

It depends on two things.

The first thing is a minimum trading position on that exchange. For example, the min trading position is $10, you must set your trading order to value like $240 or a little bit lower than $240 like $239 or $238. You can not set your trading order to value like $241 or higher.

The second thing is an incremental value of that coin, whether it is enough for you to set a smaller incremental trading order to match $10 or it must be $15 or $20.

Maybe your exchange has an issue with rounding numbers? Like mostly in the frontend issues of their website or app?
Like maybe the fees were subtracte,d and that's the time they rounded it off happens but there's issue about how they rounding off the numbers?

I Haven't noticed that mate, what i have noticed on Bybit sometimes is that, if your screen is too small and you dont draw the strychnine parameter that covers how much wort of your asset you want to open the position with, you may open the other thinking you cover the 100% which is total avaliable money in the trading account, you may end up just buy with 80% of your avaliable funds thinking you opened your position wirh 100% of your avaliable funds.

Most time i have to go back and open again with the remaining avaliable balance to make up my desired position quantity, i dont need to add more money to my trading account at that point, unless i am trading on the future market and the previous opened position is already going against me that way you may not be able to access the left over funds to open the make position and you have to wait, or add up more money if you so desperate for that.

Exhanges don’t open the full $250 because part of your funds is instantly reserved for fees, spreads, and sometimes a small margin buffer requirements. Even if the fee is less than $1, exchanges calculate position size using the post fee amount, and spreads or price slippage can shave off a few more dollars in your position so the actual opened position is smaller than your deposit. Actually they automated it the way user wont worry on fees but Im not sure other cex how they typically handle future or leverage trading on their site.

Imagine that you opened a position with $250 and only $219 position is opened. When you try to close a position, how much does it give you back? Does it give you back almost $250 if you try to close it immediately or does it steal $31?
Also, look at one thing. If Binance shows $219, then open your Binance app on your smartphone or on your desktop, go to Assets, then from the overview move to Futures and see how much your balance is. If your balance on Futures is $250, then everything is okay. I haven't traded futures for a very long time but I'll open a position for you if you want further help.

This is influenced by many different factors, without which it is very difficult to answer your question accurately. But the main ones are the fees associated with retention on commission and margin, as well as the cost of one contract, which is a multiple of which the position is opened.

I have not seen this before by any chance. I mean we know trading fee and all that, but it is not that big at all. Did OP figured out what was the reason and fixed it?

I have tried it just now, to see how, and both on leverage and on spot, it did not happen. Whatever I put, just went right there, so if it was 250 bucks, then it's all 250 bucks, and allows me to do that, without any drop like this.

Exchanges sometimes screw up and make mistakes, and trying the same thing again to see if you can replicate the issue helps, you see if it goes on, or just one time thing.

This could be a small temporary thing. Normally it should not happen this way, and we need to see how this could very well work for the time being as well.

I don't also experience this as i have been doing on both the spot and future trades, but also, i noticed an increase in the conversion fee rate they are taking when ever you want to swap one coin to another, also when sending a coin form one wallet to another, you may experience the same $1 deduction for transaction, fee, however, sometimes when i wanted to exchange and i see that the rate is not as the same as the amount am having, then i back it then restart from the beginning, some little adjustment do appear as difference, the exchanges are the ones manipulating on this, mostly at high volatility market.

The difference is much and I have only tried this on spot, even when I did it they only deducted their fees and left some fraction to me, I had to go use the auto converter to exchange micro balance I had after they had deducted their fees.
Can't you manually input the value of whenever you placed the order they deducts such amount from you automatically? Okay, if so I would have to suggest you use another coin pairs of they are also having such higher deductions.

Yes I noticed this too but I think there's a lot of factors that affects it such as trading fee, price spread and probably safety buffer. Wherein, whenever you create a position the trading fee is taken away instantly, the price spread that makes the price lower because you just bought and the safety buffer in case the market instantly goes against you, it's more like a refundable deposit just in case.

In the real trade, you won't be able to make an exact number when buying, but you can make it close by adding a little bit more, probably add around $10-$20?

I wrote earlier in this thread that the position being opened is equal to a multiple of the contract value. Apparently that information wasn't enough, and I'll try to explain it again.

If the value of the contract is calculated in dollars, then when you open a position for 250 bucks, you will be opened for the same 250 dollars.

If the contract value is calculated, for example, in BTC, then when you open a position, your $250 will be recalculated in multiples of 0.001 BTC. And now counting: now the price of BTC is 117400, which means we divide our $250 by the current price of bitcoin and get about 0.00213BTC. Now we round this amount to a multiple of the contract price of 0.001 BTC and get 0.002 BTC. This is the amount you can buy when opening a position, which in dollar terms is 117400 - 234.8 USDT at the exchange rate.

The reason for that also could be that you are trading on an exchange that charges high fees and when the fees get deducted from you balance it may not be enough to open the position again since the fees have taken a better part of of the available funds, between that also we can adjust some strings that make fees deduction from the available open Money and going ahead to execute the trade without have that stop because of less available balance after fees deduction.

I think this could be high leveraging on exchanges i came across it some months back but I can't really specify the reason for the fee cut, and things as this can be easily influenced by so many things but I'm looking at it that it's based on a high fee leveraging and it just seem like the total money one can use to open the trade or something and why can't one go through it normally other than this deductions.

So are you directly saying that exchanges charges different from others or their fees are subjected or directly proportional to the amount being traded at the moment?
If so, then I could flashed back then I when lodged a complaint about exchange not allowing me to trade some of my microbalances left out in Bitcoin and I used an auto convert to coverage it from BTC to usdt before I was able to pull them off from the exchange. But most times the fees aren't that much since it's more competitive nowadays having different exchange around the space could make it lesser and more attractive to people to join ans uses their services.

I haven't experienced this. Are you referring to the position value or the actual margin that you have, because those could be two different things? When you add leverage, that makes the position size larger, and you could possibly earn or lose more, depending on whether you're in the right direction.

Can you share your specific trading exchange?