Perpetual futures and funding
You will learn to
- What a perpetual is
- How funding keeps it near spot
- What funding tells you about positioning
A future that never expires
Everything traded in NexusCore is a USDⓈ-M perpetual future on Binance: a contract that tracks the coin's price, settled in USDT, with no expiry date. You can go long or short with leverage, and you never own the coin.
Funding
Because a perpetual never expires, something must stop its price drifting away from the spot price. That is funding: a small payment between longs and shorts, usually every 8 hours. When the perpetual trades above spot (too many longs), the funding rate is positive and longs pay shorts; when below, shorts pay longs.
A typical rate is 0.01% per 8 hours. On a position held for a week that is about 0.2% — small for a swing trade, but not zero, and in frenzied markets rates of 0.1% per 8 hours or more appear.
Reading funding
- Strongly positive funding = crowded longs paying to stay long. Crowded positions are fuel for sharp moves against them (next lessons).
- Negative funding during a rally = shorts are paying and getting squeezed.
- Funding is context, not a signal: crowded trades can stay crowded for weeks.
The FUNDING item in the chart footer shows the current rate for the pair on screen.
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Check yourself
1. Funding is +0.05% and you hold a long. Every funding interval you…
- Receive 0.05%
- Pay 0.05% of the position ✓
- Pay nothing
Positive funding: longs pay shorts.
2. Very positive funding mainly tells you…
- Price will fall now
- Longs are crowded ✓
- Volume is low
It describes positioning; timing still needs price.
Terms in this lesson
- Funding rate
- Periodic payment between longs and shorts that keeps a perpetual near spot.
- Perpetual future
- A futures contract with no expiry that tracks the spot price via funding.
Practise it on real charts. In the app, this lesson comes with real examples (reveal what happened next), a graded drill and the track test. Open the Academy in NexusCore — free →