The formula behind liquidation on perpetual futures, worked examples at 10x, 25x, 50x and 100x, and why liquidation costs more than a stop at the same price.
On a perpetual futures exchange you borrow exposure from the system. The exchange must make sure your loss never exceeds the margin you posted, otherwise someone else has to pay. So it watches the mark price and, when your unrealized loss eats your margin down to the maintenance level, it closes the position. That is liquidation. It is not a punishment; it is accounting.
For an isolated long: liquidation price ≈ entry × (1 − 1/leverage + maintenance rate). For a short: entry × (1 + 1/leverage − maintenance rate). With a 0.5% maintenance rate and an entry of $80,000: at 10x a long is liquidated near $72,400 (a 9.5% drop); at 25x near $77,200 (3.5%); at 50x near $79,200 (1.5%); at 100x near $79,600 (0.5%).
Notice the shape of that list. Going from 10x to 25x costs you six percentage points of cushion. Going from 50x to 100x costs you only one point, because there was barely any cushion left to lose. Past 25x the trade is mostly about surviving noise, not about being right.
When a stop-loss triggers, you sell at roughly the stop price and keep whatever margin remains. When you are liquidated, the exchange takes the position at the bankruptcy level and charges a liquidation fee first. In practice you lose the entire margin, sometimes slightly more on a fast move. A stop placed 0.3% before the liquidation price preserves most of your margin for the next trade.
Exchanges liquidate on the mark price, usually an index of several spot markets, not on the last traded price of their own order book. This protects you from a single thin wick on one venue, and it is why a simulator that uses a multi-exchange index behaves like the real thing. A simulator that uses one exchange's last price will liquidate you at the wrong moments and teach you the wrong reflexes.
Write the formula on a card. Before any trade, compute the liquidation price and compare it with the recent range. If the last few hours already covered that distance, the position is a coin flip. Paper platforms that show the liquidation line on the chart make this check a glance instead of a calculation; use one until the numbers are second nature.