Portfolio margin on Hyperliquid
One balance for spot and perps, with automatic borrowing against HYPE, BTC and stablecoins. Powerful, and easy to misuse.
Portfolio margin is an optional Hyperliquid account mode that margins spot holdings and perp positions together, automatically borrowing against eligible collateral (HYPE at a 0.65 loan-to-value, BTC at 0.5) and paying interest on idle balances. It requires more than $5M of weighted volume or more than $10,000 of account value, accounts above $25M are excluded, and the account is liquidated when its portfolio margin ratio passes 0.95.
By default, a trading account keeps separate pots: spot balances in one place, perp margin in another. Portfolio margin merges them. Your HYPE, BTC, USDC and USDT, and your perp positions across Hyperliquid’s own and builder-deployed (HIP-3) markets, are all margined as one portfolio. If you’re short on a balance when placing an order, the system borrows automatically against your other collateral.
Think of a brokerage margin account rather than a set of separate wallets. It’s the most capital-efficient mode Hyperliquid offers, and the one with the most moving parts.
The four account modes
Your account abstraction mode decides how spot and perp balances interact. From the docs:
| Mode | How balances work | Recommended for |
|---|---|---|
| Unified account | One balance per asset. Your USDC backs core perps, trade.xyz perps and USDC spot trading; your USDT backs USDT-collateral markets and USDT spot | Most users (the docs’ recommendation) |
| Portfolio margin | One portfolio across all eligible assets (HYPE, BTC, USDC, USDT), with automatic borrowing | The most capital-efficient option |
| Standard (manual) | Separate spot and perp balances, separate balances per HIP-3 dex; cross margin works inside each dex only | Market makers, high-volume bots, deployers and builders |
| DEX abstraction | Discontinued | — |
Unified account and portfolio margin are limited to 50,000 user actions per day; standard mode has no such cap. A builder address must be in standard mode to collect builder fees.
Who qualifies, and the caps
Portfolio margin is gated while the lending side builds up. Requirements in the docs:
- Master account with more than $5M weighted volume or more than $10,000 account value
- Account value under $25M
Supply and borrow caps:
| Asset | Global supply cap | Global borrow cap | Per-user supply cap | Per-user borrow cap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| USDC | 1B | 500M | 250M | 50M |
| USDT | 50M | 10M | 5M | 1M |
| HYPE | 25M | — | 1M | — |
| BTC | 5,000 | — | 200 | — |
When a cap is hit, the account falls back to non-portfolio-margin behavior, and any extra margin must come from the settlement asset itself.
Borrowing and interest
Each collateral asset has a loan-to-value (LTV) between 0 and 1: HYPE 0.65, BTC 0.5. If you place an order without enough of the needed asset, the system borrows it up to balance x price x LTV. With $10,000 of HYPE, that’s up to $6,500 of borrowing power.
Interest accrues continuously and is indexed hourly, like funding. The stablecoin borrow rate is:
5% + 4.75 x max(0, utilization − 0.8) per year
| Pool utilization | Borrow rate (APY) |
|---|---|
| 80% or less | 5% |
| 85% | 28.75% |
| 90% | 52.5% |
| 100% | 100% |
Idle balances earn interest at the same rate, shared among suppliers, after the protocol keeps 10% as a buffer for liquidations. The docs note that HyperCore lending isn’t tokenized; tokenized lending is left to apps on the HyperEVM, which a future CoreWriter action will be able to plug into.
Worked example: the carry trade
The docs’ own example. You hold 1 BTC spot and short 1 BTC perp at 10x, with BTC at $100,000. Your price exposure cancels out; what you’re collecting is funding (shorts usually receive it; see funding rates).
- You pay interest only on the 1/10 initial margin but earn funding on the full $100,000 position.
- BTC falls to $50,000: the perp short is in profit (in USDC), the spot is worth less; they offset.
- BTC rises to $150,000: the short is losing, so portfolio margin automatically borrows about $50,000 USDC against your spot BTC, now worth $150,000. No forced selling.
- BTC rises to $200,000: the borrowing gets too large for BTC’s 0.5 LTV; you have to shrink the trade or face a borrow-lend liquidation.
Without portfolio margin, the perp short would be backed only by USDC, and the price range you could survive would be much narrower. You still carry funding risk, interest cost, and drift between spot and perp prices.
When it liquidates
Portfolio margin generalizes cross margin to the whole account. The engine tracks a portfolio margin ratio: the maintenance requirement divided by the account’s liquidation value, worst case across borrowable assets. Collateral counts at a liquidation threshold of 0.5 + 0.5 x LTV, so HYPE at 82.5% of its value and BTC at 75%. A fixed 20 USDC offset is added to the requirement.
- Ratio above 0.95: liquidatable.
- Liquidation goes straight to a backstop liquidator (system address
0xbbb...b); unlike perps, there’s no market liquidation on the book first, because spot books are less consistently liquid. - Between the partial and full thresholds, positions are taken over in 20% steps until the account is healthy; below the full threshold, everything is taken over.
- The order isn’t predictable: depending on which oracle updates first, either the perp side or the borrow side may be liquidated first.
Why it matters to you
- Less idle capital. Holding HYPE or BTC no longer means also parking separate USDC for perps.
- Idle assets earn interest automatically.
- But one portfolio means one failure point. A sharp fall in your collateral can liquidate positions that had nothing to do with it.
- Most people don’t need it. The docs recommend the unified account for most users. Portfolio margin pays off for hedged strategies like the carry trade.
What can go wrong
- Collateral crashes. HYPE or BTC falling cuts your borrowing power at the same time positions may be losing.
- Interest spikes. Above 80% pool utilization, borrow rates climb steeply, up to 100% a year at full utilization.
- Caps change behavior. If a global cap is hit, your account falls back to normal margining, which can leave positions under-margined.
- No book-first liquidation. Takeovers go straight to the backstop liquidator.
- Complex and new. The docs call it a complex upgrade still bootstrapping its supply side. Hyperliquid’s terms also restrict the United States, Ontario and other jurisdictions.
Related: liquidation, funding and margin, and the HYPE token.
Questions people ask
Who can use portfolio margin on Hyperliquid?
Per the docs, the master account needs more than $5M in weighted trading volume or more than $10,000 in account value, and account value must be under $25M. Supply and borrow caps also apply per asset; when they are hit, the account falls back to non-portfolio-margin behavior.
Which assets count as collateral?
The docs list HYPE, BTC, USDC and USDT as the eligible portfolio-margin assets. HYPE has a loan-to-value of 0.65 and BTC 0.5, meaning you can borrow up to 65% or 50% of their value.
What interest do I pay on borrowing?
Stablecoin borrow rates follow 5% + 4.75 x max(0, utilization − 80%) a year, compounded continuously and indexed hourly. At 80% utilization or less that's 5%; at 90% it's 52.5%; at 100% it's 100%. The protocol keeps 10% of interest as a liquidation buffer, and suppliers earn the rest.
What is the difference between unified account and portfolio margin?
A unified account gives you one balance per asset, shared between spot and the cross-margin perps that use that asset as collateral. Portfolio margin goes further: all eligible assets are margined together, and you can borrow one against another.
Do sub-accounts share portfolio margin?
No. The docs say sub-accounts are still treated separately under portfolio margin.