Cross-Margin Architecture & Liquidation Risk

Quanto.trade employs a cross margin system powered by portfolio-wide margining.

Cross Margin

Quanto.trade employs a cross margin system powered by portfolio-wide margining, allowing traders to deploy multiple collateral types across all open positions. This architecture offers capital efficiency and flexibility—but also introduces additional risk if not properly understood.

In a cross-margin environment, all assets within a trader’s account contribute to the margin pool. While this allows users to open larger positions or diversify across multiple markets, it also means that a single underperforming position with deeply negative PnL can place the entire account at risk of liquidation, not just that individual trade.

This risk is further compounded by Quanto.trade’s unique use of quanto-style perpetuals, where all contracts are denominated and settled in $QTO, regardless of the underlying asset or collateral used.

Unexpected Liquidations from $QTO-Denominated Exposure

Because both margin calculations and liquidation thresholds are expressed in $QTO, fluctuations in the token’s price introduce an additional layer of complexity and volatility. For example, when combined with cross-margining, this means that one highly leveraged or volatile position can consume margin from the rest of the portfolio, triggering full account liquidation even on unrelated positions with neutral or positive PnL.