Are longs or shorts paying to hold their leverage? The live open-interest-weighted perpetual funding rate across all exchanges, with a 30-day history.
A funding rate is a small periodic payment swapped between longs and shorts on Bitcoin perpetual futures. It exists to keep the perpetual price glued to the underlying spot price. When the perp trades above spot (more aggressive longs), the rate is positive and longs pay shorts. When it trades below spot (more aggressive shorts), the rate is negative and shorts pay longs. The figure above is weighted by each exchange's open interest, so it reflects the whole market rather than one venue.
Positive funding is normal and healthy in an uptrend — it just means there's demand to be long. The signal is in the extremes. Persistently high positive funding means longs are crowded and paying a lot to stay in; that leverage is fuel for a long squeeze if price dips. Sustained negative funding means shorts are crowded and vulnerable to a short squeeze. In both cases the crowd is often most one-sided right before it gets punished.
Because funding settles multiple times per day, a small per-settlement rate compounds into a meaningful annual cost of carry. The annualised figure above shows roughly what it costs (or pays) to hold a leveraged position for a year at the current rate — useful for gauging how expensive the market's leverage has become.
Funding is most powerful read alongside liquidations and long/short positioning: high funding + crowded longs + rising open interest is the classic setup for a violent deleveraging. See the live derivatives section for the full picture.