CashboardGlossary · Perps
What do long and short mean?
Going long profits when an asset's price rises; going short profits when it falls, usually through borrowing or derivatives.
How do longs and shorts work?
A long is how most people own anything: you buy, and you gain if the price goes up. A short is the mirror image. You gain when price falls and lose when it rises. In stocks, shorting traditionally means borrowing shares, selling them, and buying them back later to return them.
In crypto the easiest way to go short is a perp. You open a short with margin and the contract pays you as price drops, without borrowing the actual coin. Lending markets allow the old-style short too (borrow the token, sell it), but then you pay borrow interest on top.
The risk is not symmetric. An unleveraged long can lose at most what you paid. A short has no natural ceiling on losses, because price can keep climbing. With leverage both sides can be liquidated, and on perps both sides pay or receive funding depending on which way the rate points.
Say you short $2,000 of ETH exposure at $3,000. If ETH drops to $2,700 you are up about $200. A rally to $3,300 costs the same $200, and nothing caps the loss if the rally keeps going. Funding nudges both numbers a little either way.
Also called: going long, going short, short selling.
Where does long and short show up in Cashboard?
In Paper trading you can take either side of a stock or a Hyperliquid perp and watch the result move with the market, while nothing is sent to any venue. Stocks stay at 1x, and perps go up to the leverage Hyperliquid allows on that market. For real positions, Perps positions shows what any Hyperliquid address you watch has open, with its total long and short exposure in the header.
Frequently asked questions
Can you short crypto without borrowing it?
Yes. A short perpetual future gives you short exposure with only margin posted and no borrowed coins. You pay or receive funding while it is open, and the position can be liquidated if price rises far enough.
Where can you read more about long and short?
Related terms
Last reviewed . Market data in Cashboard comes from the providers named on each widget and may be delayed. Nothing here is financial advice.