Non-USD Collateral

By default, collateral is posted in USD and PNL is paid out in USD.

Balances of the following coins also count towards collateral.

For positive balances, collateral = size * price * min(weight, 1.1 / (1 + imf factor * sqrt(size))). For negative balances, collateral = size * price.

You can choose whether to use FTT as collateral on the settings page. By default your account will use FTT as collateral. Note that Weight (total) is used to determine collateral for the purpose of liquidations, and Weight (initial) is for the purpose of opening new positions.

In the event that your USD balance falls too far below zero (see below for details), some of your balances in the above coins may be automatically traded into to USD by sending market orders into the corresponding FTX spot markets.

Any positive PnL will be paid out in USD regardless of which type of collateral you use.

FTX will trade your non-USD collateral into USD if your USD balance is negative and any of the following hold:

• You are close to liquidation: your account's margin fraction is less than (20bps + maintenance margin fraction requirement)
• Your negative USD balance is large: over $30,000 in magnitude
• Your negative USD balance is large when compared to overall collateral: its magnitude is over 4 times larger than your net account collateral

FTX will first turn (non-USD fiat), then (BTC and USDT), then (ETH, BNB, PAXG, XAUT,  KNC), and (BCH, LTC, TRYB, LINK, TRX), and then FTT (if you have it enabled) into USD. If both BTC and USDT are eligible choices, FTX will choose the larger balance: if you have $1000 of USDT and $100 of BTC, your USDT will be traded into USD first. FTT collateral is always used last.

If you'd like to convert your USD PnL into BTC you can do so using our spot market.

Note that collateral conversions will potentially top you up so that you have slightly more than zero USD left by converting 10% more than is necessary in case of price movements.

Charging interest instead of collateral converting

Instead of having your collateral converted into USD, you can choose to be charged interest on your negative USD balance past -$30,000 at market rates determined by the funding market. Negative balances will require margin in the same way that futures positions do, and the default threshold for collateral conversions will be the same as for futures liquidations, i.e. being below maintenance margin.

You can turn on this setting on the settings page. Interest is charged once per minute. Interest payments are visible on the fills page.

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