What this shows
Perpetual futures are the most traded crypto contracts. They never expire, so exchanges keep their price close to spot with funding: a small payment between traders every few hours. When the contract trades above spot, longs pay shorts; when it trades below, shorts pay longs.
That makes funding a direct read on how traders are positioned:
- High positive funding: traders are paying up to hold leveraged longs. The market is crowded on one side.
- Negative funding: shorts are paying. Traders are bearish enough to pay to bet against the price.
All rates on this page are annualized so that venues with different funding intervals can be compared. Around 11% a year is neutral: Binance and Hyperliquid both build a base interest rate of 0.01% per eight hours into funding, which is what longs pay when the contract trades exactly at spot.
Open interest is the total value of open contracts: how much leverage is in the market.
Where the data comes from
Live funding and open interest come from OKX, Deribit and Hyperliquid, updated every six hours. Binance, the largest venue, blocks requests from US servers like ours, so its live numbers may be missing; its full funding history since 2020 comes from its public data archive and is complete through the end of last month. Hyperliquid's own history fills in the most recent weeks on the chart.
What happened after each funding regime
For every day since 2020 we took Binance's 7-day average BTC funding and looked at Bitcoin's price 30 and 90 days later.
Over 30 days the pattern runs in a clear order: the higher funding was, the worse Bitcoin did next.
- After negative funding, Bitcoin rose in about seven of ten 30-day windows, with a median gain well above an average day.
- After overheated funding (above 30% a year), Bitcoin was lower 30 days later more often than not.
This is the classic contrarian reading: crowded leveraged longs tend to get flushed out, and capitulating shorts tend to get squeezed. Two cautions:
- The windows overlap, so each row rests on far fewer independent episodes than days (the ≈ figure). The overheated row comes mostly from the 2020–2021 bull market.
- Over 90 days the order is less clean. Funding says more about the next few weeks than about the next few months.
How to use it
- Treat funding above about 30% a year as a warning that leverage is stretched and a sharp drop could clear it out.
- Treat negative funding during a sell-off as a sign that pessimism is crowded, which has often come near short-term lows.
- Rising open interest with high funding means the leverage behind the move is growing; falling open interest after a crash means it has been cleared.
Compare with the Fear & Greed Index, which measures the same crowd psychology from sentiment rather than from positioning.
FAQ
What is the Bitcoin funding rate today? The current annualized rate, averaged across the exchanges we can reach, is in the headline and the first card above, with each venue in the table below it. It updates every six hours.
What does a negative funding rate mean? Short sellers are paying long holders to keep their positions open, which means the perpetual contract trades below the spot price. It signals bearish positioning. Since 2020, Bitcoin has more often risen than fallen in the month after negative funding.
What is a normal funding rate for Bitcoin? Around 0.01% per eight hours, or about 11% a year, is the neutral level on Binance and Hyperliquid. Since 2020 Binance's BTC funding has spent most days between roughly 0% and 25% a year.
Is high funding bearish? Historically, short-term, yes: after Binance's 7-day average BTC funding rose above about 30% a year, Bitcoin was lower 30 days later more often than not. It signals crowded leverage that can unwind quickly, though it can stay high for weeks in a strong rally.