Share this article
Binance Says It's Cutting Leverage Limit to 20x, a Day After FTX Announces the Same
"We didn't want to make this a thingy," Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao posted Monday on Twitter, a week after making the change.
Updated Sep 14, 2021, 1:30 p.m. Published Jul 26, 2021, 6:01 a.m.
Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange by trading volume, said it is reducing the maximum leverage users can use to trade futures contracts, a day after derivatives exchange FTX announced the same change, moves perhaps designed to help avoid the worst of a coming regulatory storm.
STORY CONTINUES BELOW
Don't miss another story.Subscribe to the Crypto Daybook Americas Newsletter today. See all newsletters
- The new limit is 20 times leverage, the exchange's founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao said in a tweet Monday, down from 100 times.
- Binance imposed the limit on new users on July 19, and will gradually expand the move to all users, Zhao said.
- FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried announced a similar change is taking place on his platform in a tweet posted on Sunday.
- Zhao didn't state the reasoning behind the decision, but said that upcoming changes for existing users were "in the interest of consumer protection."
- A July 23 New York Times article criticized high-leverage trading in crypto as risky. The article implied impending regulatory moves against high leverage margin trading, citing Timothy Massad, a former U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission chairman.
- Binance's Zhao acknowledged that "volatility is amplified by the leverage," according to the New York Times article.
- Bankman-Fried said in his Twitter thread announcing FTX's change that high leverage is a small part of positions, not a big contribution to volatility, and that many arguments against it "miss the mark."
- Exchanges are likely worried about the regulatory screws tightening on margin trading. Huobi suspended the service to Chinese users in June.
More For You
What to know:
- As of October 2025, GoPlus has generated $4.7M in total revenue across its product lines. The GoPlus App is the primary revenue driver, contributing $2.5M (approx. 53%), followed by the SafeToken Protocol at $1.7M.
- GoPlus Intelligence's Token Security API averaged 717 million monthly calls year-to-date in 2025 , with a peak of nearly 1 billion calls in February 2025. Total blockchain-level requests, including transaction simulations, averaged an additional 350 million per month.
- Since its January 2025 launch , the $GPS token has registered over $5B in total spot volume and $10B in derivatives volume in 2025. Monthly spot volume peaked in March 2025 at over $1.1B , while derivatives volume peaked the same month at over $4B.
More For You
Filecoin Trades Little Changed, Underperforms Wider Crypto Markets
The token has major support at the $1.36 level and resistance at $1.40.
What to know:
- Filecoin slipped 0.2% to $1.37 over the last 24 hours.
- Trading volume was 29% above weekly averages as institutional flows accelerated.
Top Stories
