Gold, Silver and Equity-Linked Contracts Get Higher Risk Limits
Bybit is sharply increasing maximum leverage across 24 unique TradFi perpetual contracts, raising limits as high as 150x on gold, silver and crude oil while substantially expanding leverage on a range of stock and ETF-linked products.
The new limits take effect on Sept. 11 and represent one of Bybit’s most aggressive expansions of leverage across its growing traditional-asset derivatives business.
Gold-linked XAUUSDT, silver-linked XAGUSDT and crude-oil contract CLUSDT will see maximum leverage rise from 100x to 150x.
Several equity and ETF-linked perpetuals will move to maximum leverage of 100x.
These include contracts linked to SK Hynix, Micron Technology, SPY, South Korea ETF EWY, semiconductor leveraged ETF SOXL and Samsung. The Samsung-linked contract receives one of the largest proportional increases, jumping from 25x to 100x.
SPCXUSDT, Bybit’s perpetual providing price exposure linked to SpaceX, moves from 75x to 100x under the broader adjustment.
A second group of stock-linked contracts is moving from 25x to 50x. The list includes AMD, Oracle, Dell, IBM, Nebius, Strategy, Coinbase and Circle-linked perpetuals, along with several leveraged ETF products.
Bybit says the adjustments will apply automatically to affected accounts from around 8 a.m. UTC on Sept. 11.
Maximum leverage does not necessarily apply to every position size. Bybit uses a dynamic risk-limit structure in which permitted leverage generally falls as a trader’s position becomes larger, limiting the amount of exposure that can be accumulated at the most aggressive settings.
The exchange also advised customers to trade responsibly and consider using lower leverage despite making the higher limits available.
One detail in Bybit’s published table remains unclear. QQQUSDT appears twice, with both entries showing current maximum leverage of 25x but one listing an increase to 100x and the other an increase to 50x.
The duplicate creates uncertainty over the final maximum leverage applicable to the Nasdaq-100 ETF-linked contract unless Bybit corrects or clarifies the notice.
The leverage increases come as Bybit rapidly expands its offering of perpetual contracts tied to traditional financial markets.
TradFi Perpetuals use much of the same infrastructure as the exchange’s cryptocurrency futures. Contracts are settled in USDT, have no expiration date and allow traders to take long or short positions without owning the underlying stock, ETF or commodity.
They also trade around the clock, including periods when the underlying traditional market is closed.
Bybit currently offers more than 200 TradFi perpetual products spanning equities, commodities and other traditional-market exposures. They sit alongside the company’s separate CFD business, which operates through an MT5 account and offers hundreds of conventional instruments.
The distinction is significant.
TradFi perpetuals run directly through a user’s existing Bybit Unified Trading Account and use crypto-style funding and liquidation mechanics. The CFD product operates through separate brokerage infrastructure and follows a more conventional leveraged-trading model.
Bybit has increasingly blurred the boundary between those two worlds by giving crypto traders exposure to companies, ETFs and commodities through familiar perpetual-futures mechanics.
The latest leverage changes accelerate that convergence.
A trader accustomed to using 50x or 100x leverage on bitcoin can now apply similar leverage to synthetic exposure linked to gold, SPY, Samsung or semiconductor products from the same account.
At 100x leverage, an adverse price move of around 1% can theoretically consume the initial margin before fees, maintenance-margin requirements and other factors are considered. At 150x, the equivalent margin represents less than 0.7% of the position’s notional value.
The practical liquidation level varies according to maintenance margin, fees, position size and Bybit’s risk tier, but the higher limits leave traders with considerably smaller buffers against market movement.
Bybit is simultaneously making a separate risk-limit change to SPCXUSDT.
That adjustment takes effect around 7:30 a.m. UTC on Sept. 11 and may require some existing traders to change their leverage or add margin.
If an existing SPCX position does not satisfy the updated requirements, Bybit says the account may initially be placed in reduce-only mode. The customer would be able to reduce the affected position but prevented from increasing its size until a compatible leverage or risk limit is selected.
The exchange is providing a buffer period through Sept. 28.
After that deadline, Bybit will automatically apply the new parameters. Positions that cannot satisfy the resulting margin requirements could face liquidation.
The same rules extend to Copy Trading and Trading Bot positions, adding another layer of importance for customers running automated strategies.
Together, the two notices show Bybit simultaneously opening the door to substantially greater leverage while recalibrating the controls governing how much risk traders can carry.
Higher Leverage Makes Bybit’s TradFi Push Much More Aggressive
The interesting part of this update is not simply that Bybit changed some numbers in a risk table.
It is where the higher leverage is being offered.
Gold at 150x will not look particularly unusual to traders familiar with offshore FX and CFD brokers. What stands out is seeing 100x leverage attached to products tracking equity ETFs, semiconductor names and individual companies inside a crypto exchange account.
That changes the competitive position of Bybit’s TradFi business.
Crypto exchanges initially entered traditional markets by giving their users convenient exposure to recognizable assets. The pitch was mainly about access: trade stocks, gold and indices without opening another brokerage account.
Bybit is now competing on risk appetite as well.
A Samsung-linked perpetual moving from 25x to 100x does not merely give customers more flexibility. It materially changes the type of trading the contract supports.
At 25x, the trader posts roughly 4% of the notional position as initial margin before other requirements. At 100x, that falls toward 1%.
A relatively ordinary move in the underlying market can therefore become an account-level event.
The 150x metals limits are even more striking because Bybit’s perpetual contracts continue trading when the underlying traditional markets are closed.
That 24/7 structure is one of Bybit’s main selling points, but it also creates an unusual pricing problem.
When the physical or futures market supplying the strongest price discovery is closed, a perpetual can still react to geopolitical headlines or changing crypto-market positioning. Funding and index mechanisms then have to keep that synthetic market anchored until traditional liquidity returns.
Adding extreme leverage makes deviations during those periods more consequential.
The SPCX adjustment provides an interesting counterpoint.
On one hand, Bybit is raising SPCX’s headline maximum leverage from 75x to 100x. On the other, it is separately changing the contract’s risk parameters in a way that could force some existing traders into reduce-only mode and eventually expose incompatible positions to liquidation.
Those actions are not necessarily contradictory.
Risk-limit systems are designed to allow very high leverage on smaller positions while demanding progressively more margin as exposure grows. Bybit can therefore advertise higher maximum leverage while simultaneously tightening or restructuring the amount of risk permitted at larger position tiers.
But that nuance matters for traders.
“100x maximum leverage” does not mean every customer can simply multiply an existing position to 100 times account equity.
The other important development is the sheer range of traditional assets now receiving crypto-style leverage.
Strategy and Coinbase are already highly sensitive to cryptocurrency markets. Semiconductor stocks and leveraged ETFs can also experience substantial daily volatility. Adding 50x or 100x leverage effectively layers derivative leverage on top of assets that may already move much more aggressively than a conventional currency pair.
SOXL is an especially clear example because the underlying ETF itself is designed to deliver leveraged daily exposure to semiconductor stocks.
A perpetual layered on top of that product introduces another level of leverage before the trader even adjusts the Bybit multiplier.
This is where Bybit’s TradFi expansion becomes more than a product-list story.
The exchange is exporting the perpetual-futures culture of crypto — 24/7 trading, USDT collateral, funding rates, automated bots and extremely high leverage — into assets that historically lived inside the brokerage industry.
That may attract traders who already understand those mechanics.
It also creates a much thinner margin for error.
Bybit’s warning to manage risk is therefore more than boilerplate. At 100x or 150x, risk management is effectively the product.
Shane Neagle is a financial markets analyst and digital assets journalist specializing in cryptocurrencies, memecoins, prediction markets, and blockchain-based financial systems. His work focuses on market structure, incentive design, liquidity dynamics, and how speculative behavior emerges across decentralized platforms.
He closely covers emerging crypto narratives, including memecoin ecosystems, on-chain activity, and the role of prediction markets in pricing political, economic, and technological outcomes. His analysis examines how capital flows, trader psychology, and platform design interact to create rapid market cycles across Web3 environments.
Alongside digital assets, Shane follows broader fintech and online trading developments, particularly where traditional financial infrastructure intersects with blockchain technology. His research-driven approach emphasizes understanding why markets behave the way they do, rather than short-term price movements, helping readers navigate fast-evolving crypto and speculative markets with clearer context.