Kraken maintains margin pools in eight cryptocurrencies and two fiat currencies that allow you to open positions larger than your leveraged funds.
What Are The Margin Allowance Limits?
The margin allowance limits for each currency vary based on your current verification level.
| Starter | Intermediate | Pro | |
| Euros * | 5,000 EUR | 50,000 EUR | 500,000 EUR |
| US Dollars * | 5,000 USD | 50,000 USD | 500,000 USD |
| Augur | 1,000 REP | 2,500 REP | 25,000 REP |
| Bitcoin | 2.5 XBT | 25 XBT | 250 XBT |
| Bitcoin Cash | 5 BCH | 50 BCH | 500 BCH |
| Ethereum | 25 ETH | 250 ETH | 2,500 ETH |
| Ether Classic | 250 ETC | 2,500 ETC | 25,000 ETC |
| Monero | 50 XMR | 500 XMR | 5,000 XMR |
| Ripple | 25,000 XRP | 250,000 XRP | 2,500,000 XRP |
| Tezos | 1,500 XTZ | 15,000 XTZ | 100,000 XTZ |
| Tether | 5,000 USDT | 50,000 USDT | 500,000 USDT |
* EUR and USD margin allowance limits only apply to long positions. See below for further explanation.
If you try to open a position with margin that exceeds your allowance limits, you will see a "Margin allowance exceeded" error.
How Do Margin Allowance Limits Work?
Margin allowance limits are separate for each currency. So an Intermediate user could use up to 50,000 EUR and 50,000 USD from our margin pools at the same time (assuming there are funds available in the pool).
Margin allowance limits are a total per currency, not a total per position. So an Intermediate user can create a single XBT/USD long position for 50,000 USD, or five XBT/USD long positions at 10,000 USD each.
Margin allowance limits are reset when you close a position, which automatically repays the funds to our margin pool.
Note: The margin pool funds are derived from depends on the trading pair and whether you are long or short.
Long vs Short
For a crypto-to-fiat pair like XBT/USD:
- To go long (i.e. buy XBT), funds from the USD pool are used and thus the USD allowance limits apply.
- To go short (i.e. sell XBT), funds from the XBT pool are used and thus the XBT allowance limits apply.
For a crypto-to-crypto pair like ETH/XBT:
- To go long (i.e. buy ETH), funds from the XBT pool are used and thus the XBT allowance limits apply.
- To go short (i.e. sell ETH), funds from the ETH pool are used and thus the ETH allowance limits apply.
Note: The limits for going short are not supposed to be the same as the limits for going long. Limits are not based on the exchange rate. They are based on how much of each currency we have available in our margin pools.
Examples
Your account is Intermediate and you want to open a long position in bitcoin against fiat currencies. The maximum size of your position, assuming you had enough collateral to open it, would be 50,000 USD worth of bitcoin plus 50,000 euro worth of bitcoin. The number of bitcoins that it would be possible to buy in these positions would depend on the current price of bitcoin. The limit would not be 25 bitcoin (the Intermediate allowance for bitcoin).
If you wanted to open a short position in bitcoin against USD, EUR, or ETH, the limit on the size of the position would be 25 bitcoin because when you are shorting bitcoin, you are using Kraken’s funds from the XBT margin pool.