Crypto Stop Loss: Trigger, Fill, and the Checks That Catch Failures

A stop-loss order sets one number and leaves two others to the market. Your trigger price decides when the order reaches the order book. The fill price is decided by whatever is resting on that book at that moment. And on Hyperliquid perpetuals the trigger fires on mark price, a separate index from the last trade printed on your chart. Those three numbers come apart most in the conditions that made you want a stop in the first place.

Order-form behavior described here was verified against the Hyperlens trade page code on 29 July 2026.

What does a stop-loss order actually promise?

A stop-loss order is a standing instruction: when a reference price reaches your trigger, send an order. The instruction is reliable. Whether it fills, and at what price, is a weaker promise. Three questions keep those apart: when does it fire, does it fill, and what price do you get.

Four terms do most of the work.

• Trigger price. The level that activates the order. Before that, nothing has been sent to the book.
• Market execution. On trigger, the order crosses the book and takes whatever prices are there until the size is filled.
• Limit execution. On trigger, a limit order is placed. It fills at your limit price or better, or it sits on the book waiting.
• Take profit. The same machinery pointed the other way. A stop sits on the losing side of the current price, a take profit on the winning side.

Hyperlens exposes all four combinations in the order-type menu on the trade page: Stop Market, Stop Limit, Take Market, and Take Limit, grouped in the dropdown next to Limit and Market.

Which price triggers a crypto stop loss?

On Hyperliquid perpetuals, mark price triggers take-profit and stop-loss orders, not the last traded price. Mark is a median of three inputs: the oracle price plus a 150-second EMA of its gap to the Hyperliquid mid, the median of best bid, best ask and last trade on Hyperliquid, and a weighted median of Binance, OKX, Bybit, Gate IO and MEXC perp mids. It updates roughly every three seconds, alongside the oracle.

Two things follow from that index design. A single sharp wick on Hyperliquid's own book carries only one of the three inputs, so it may not drag mark far enough to fire your stop. And mark can move on external venue prices while Hyperliquid's own chart looks calmer, firing a stop that the candles alone would not explain.

The Hyperlens order form shows a live distance under the Trigger field, labelled Stop Loss or Take Profit followed by the percentage gap and the words "from mark". That percentage is measured against the price the page is streaming for the market, while the trigger itself is evaluated by Hyperliquid against mark, so read the hint as orientation rather than the precise firing condition. The form also enforces the placement rule: a stop sell trigger has to sit below the current price and a stop buy above it. Put it on the wrong side and the hint turns into a warning, the field is flagged invalid, and the submit is rejected before anything is signed.

Stop market or stop limit: what does each one control?

Stop-market buys fill certainty and pays with price certainty. Stop-limit does the reverse. Neither is safer in general, because they fail in different conditions.

Hyperlens caps that stop-market slippage at 5%. An uncapped market order would take every level of a broken book, so a Stop Market goes out as a trigger order carrying a working limit price 5% past your trigger, and that is the furthest a fill can travel from the trigger before the remainder stops filling. Hyperliquid's own interface uses a 10% slippage tolerance for TP/SL market orders, per its take-profit and stop-loss documentation. The order type is the same on both, but the ceiling is not, which changes how far a bad fill can run.

Hyperliquid's documentation gives a concrete version of the stop-limit problem. A stop-loss closing a long with a $10 trigger and a $10 limit hits the book when mark drops below $10. If price falls from $11 to $9 instantly, that order is likely to rest at $10 rather than fill, because the book has already moved past it. With the limit at $8 instead, it likely fills somewhere between $9 and $8. Widen the gap between trigger and limit and you have converted the order back into something that behaves like a market order.

How do you place a stop on Hyperlens?

The sequence below is the current Hyperlens order form. Fields appear and disappear as you switch types, so the shape of the form tells you which price you are setting.

1. Open the order-type dropdown next to Limit and Market and pick Stop Market or Stop Limit. A Trigger (USDC) field appears.
2. Enter the trigger. The Mark button beside the field fills in the current price if you want to start there and edit up or down.
3. Read the hint under the field. It confirms whether the platform reads your order as a stop loss or a take profit, and it warns you when the trigger is on the wrong side.
4. For Stop Limit, fill the Price field, which is your worst acceptable fill. Stop Market hides that field, because its working price is derived from your trigger.
5. Set the size. Orders under $10 in value are blocked before submission unless the order is reduce-only.
6. On a perpetual market where you already hold a position, tick Reduce Only. The form then locks the side to the closing direction, so a stop on a long can only sell. Reduce Only is not offered on spot markets, and it does not appear on a perp market where you hold no position.
7. Submit. Stop Market asks for confirmation by default, and the confirmation line shows your trigger price followed by "(market)". Stop Limit skips that confirmation unless your limit price sits more than 20% away from the current price.
8. Look for the toast reading "Trigger order placed". It confirms the order is resting and waiting. Nothing has executed yet.

How do you confirm a stop order is live?

An untriggered stop lives in the Open Orders tab below the chart. Three columns tell you whether it is the order you meant to place. Trigger Conditions shows the condition it is waiting on, and a dash there means the order is not a trigger order at all. The TP/SL column labels it Take Profit or Stop Loss. Reduce Only shows Yes or a dash. Direction reads "Close Long" or "Close Short" for reduce-only and position-level orders instead of Long or Short.

Size and Original Size differ once an order has partially filled: Size is what remains, Original Size is what you sent. A position-level TP/SL shows Size as "Close Position" with Original Size as a dash, because it is bound to the position rather than to a fixed quantity.

The Order History tab carries the lifecycle. Open, Triggered, Filled, Canceled and Rejected are separate statuses, and Triggered followed by no fill is the state most worth catching. Hyperlens renders the specific rejection and cancellation reasons rather than a generic error, including Insufficient Margin, Below Min Notional, Invalid TP/SL, No Liquidity, Reduce-Only and TP/SL Sibling Filled.

What goes wrong, and where does it show up?

Run this list against a stop you have already placed rather than one you are about to place. Most of it is visible in the two tabs above.

• Trigger on the wrong side of price. Caught before submission: the hint under the Trigger field turns into a warning and the field is flagged invalid.
• Order value below the minimum. Orders worth less than $10 are blocked at submit unless Reduce Only is ticked, so a stop covering a small remainder of a position needs Reduce Only to go through.
• The position changed and the stop did not. A fixed-size stop keeps its original quantity after you add to or trim the position. Compare Size in Open Orders against the size of the position it is supposed to close.
• Partial fill. A triggered stop-limit that fills part of the size leaves the rest resting, and Open Orders keeps showing it with Size lower than Original Size.
• Margin gone by the time it triggers. A stop that is not reduce-only is checked against your margin at submission, and margin can be consumed by other trades before the trigger fires. Order History shows this as Insufficient Margin.
• Nothing to trade against. If the book inside the slippage cap is empty when a stop-market triggers, the unfilled remainder shows in Order History as No Liquidity.
• TP/SL attached to an entry that only partly filled. Hyperliquid places child TP/SL orders tied to a parent order only if the parent fully fills, or is partially filled and then canceled for insufficient margin. Cancel a partially filled parent yourself and the children go with it, which leaves the size you did fill without an exit order.
• TP/SL Sibling Filled. When a take profit and a stop loss are paired, one filling cancels the other. That status is the pair working as designed.

What a stop cannot do

A stop is an instruction to your venue, so it inherits every limit of that venue: it cannot create a bid that does not exist, fill inside a gap where no trading happened, or reserve your exit price in advance.

Leverage changes the stakes rather than the mechanics. Mark price drives margining, liquidations and unrealized PnL as well as TP/SL triggering. If maintenance margin is breached before mark reaches your trigger, liquidation happens first and your stop never fires. Higher leverage leaves less room between an entry and that liquidation level, which is a question about position size more than about stop placement.

None of this points to a particular distance from entry. That distance depends on the market's volatility, your position size and what you are prepared to lose, and no guide can set it for you.

Next check: open the Hyperlens trade page, go to the Open Orders tab, and confirm every position you hold has a row with a populated Trigger Conditions cell and a size that still matches the position.