Above 0.01%
Longs are paying a premium to stay in. The higher it runs, the more crowded and leveraged the long side.
Bitcoin funding rate history
Funding is what traders holding a leveraged bitcoin perpetual pay each other to stay in the trade. When most of the market is long, longs pay shorts, and they pay more the more crowded the trade gets, which makes it the cleanest public read on positioning there is.
How to read the funding rate
At 0.01%
The base rate: interest only, no premium. A calm, balanced book.
Below zero
Shorts are paying longs. The crowd is leaning bearish, which has tended to happen near lows rather than highs.
How the funding history analysis works
The tool reads daily funding on Binance's BTC perpetual from September 2019, when the contract started trading, and splits it into the low tail, the middle and the high tail of its range. For each, it measures what bitcoin did over the following weeks and months.
Then it does it again for each market regime. "High funding is bearish" is a claim about all days at once, and the same reading in a bear year and a bull year come from different distributions. The middle is kept on purpose: without a baseline, a tail's return has nothing to be measured against.
Alongside the history, the tool shows open interest and the long/short account ratio.
See the numbers
This page explains the question. The tool behind it has the data: live readings, the full history, and every number re-counted by market regime.
Frequently asked questions
What is the bitcoin funding rate?
A periodic payment between the long and short sides of a perpetual futures contract that keeps its price tied to spot. On Binance it settles every eight hours. A positive rate means longs pay shorts; negative means shorts pay longs.
What is a normal funding rate?
Binance's base rate is 0.01% per eight hours: the interest component with no premium on top. A perpetual at rest settles at exactly that, so it is the baseline. Above it, longs are paying up to stay in; below it, the crowd is leaning short.
Is high funding bearish?
Often said, and only conditionally true. High funding means crowded longs, and crowded longs can stay crowded through a bull market. The tool measures what the extremes of funding were followed by, separately for each market regime, against the middle of the range as a baseline.
What does negative funding mean?
Shorts are paying longs. It is uncommon on bitcoin and has tended to appear near capitulation, when the crowd is most bearish.