How to Start Trading on Pacifica (2026): Step by Step

Connecting creates the account; no KYC step appears in the docs, and eligibility is enforced through the Terms and geoblocking rather than identity checks. If you arrived through a referral link you claim the code after connecting, and "in order to claim a referral code you must deposit". Sub-accounts can be created later; each is margined on its own and shares the master account's fee tier.

Deposits cost network gas only and "are usually credited within minutes". Two limits still carry the closed-beta label on the docs read on 2026-09-11: "Pacifica currently limits deposits to a maximum of $500,000 account equity during Closed Beta", with larger API deposits held pending, and withdrawals are limited to $500,000 per account every 24 hours. Spot assets can also be deposited (about $10 minimum, $50,000 a day per asset) and count as collateral at their loan-to-value ratio; on the verification date the spot-assets endpoint listed only SOL.

"Margin mode is selected per trading pair. Cross margin is the default." Cross is unified with spot collateral and can borrow USDC implicitly against it; isolated "receive[s] no collateral from spot holdings". Two rules to set before you open anything: "margin mode cannot be changed for a symbol with an open position", and "leverage can be increased on a symbol with an open position but cannot be decreased until the position is closed".

Maximum leverage is per market: 50x on BTC, ETH, EUR/USD and USD/JPY; 20x on BNB, DOGE, HYPE, SOL, XRP and the S&P 500; 10x on single stocks, commodities and most alts; 5x and 3x on the tail. Initial margin is size × price ÷ leverage and maintenance margin is half of that. Order types are Market, Limit, Stop Market, Stop Limit, TWAP and Scale, plus Chase, Conditional, OCO, Trailing Stop, Swarm, Trigger Swarm and Atomic strategies, with GTC, IOC, ALO and TOB time-in-force. Fees start at 0.040% taker and 0.015% maker — see the fees page. Equity, FX and commodity perps are excluded from the backstop liquidator, so a failed market liquidation there goes straight to auto-deleveraging.

Withdrawals are "USDC on Solana only"; your wallet needs an existing USDC token account, so hold a non-zero USDC balance there first. Minimum $1, fee "$1 per withdrawal (gas)", and the $500,000 per 24 hours closed-beta cap plus an exchange-wide cap the docs say "is unlikely to affect normal withdrawals". Unrealised profit can be withdrawn "subject to the 10% initial-margin floor", and an account with a negative USDC balance "cannot withdraw USDC until the debt is repaid or sufficient spot is sold". Spot withdrawals cost about $1 of the asset and are capped at $500,000 a day per asset.