CoinDesk
Perpetual futures now average more than $200 billion in daily crypto trading volume, and for anyone trading outside Bitcoin and Ether, they are often the only derivatives venue available. CoinDesk talked to traders Lucas Krenn of STS Digital and independent trader Kenneth Ong, who were nearly unanimous on the upside: deep liquidity, cheap fees, and margin efficiency that lets one pool of capital back positions across a dozen venues. Dated futures for most altcoins are too illiquid to be usable, they said, and CME-style netting forces single-side exposure on regulated books.
Why it matters
The appeal is structural, not optional. Perps solve access, cost, and capital efficiency in one instrument, and their always-on nature has started to pull price discovery off traditional venues. Ong pointed to the opening weekend of the Iran conflict in late February, when tokenized oil perps on Hyperliquid repriced the move while the official market was closed. Both traders see "perpification" of commodities and equities accelerating as tokenized underlying assets mature, eventually sidelining dated futures altogether.
Market impact
The hidden cost is funding. Every eight hours, longs or shorts pay a floating rate that cannot be locked in at entry and cannot be hedged once the trade is on. Krenn called it "unquantifiable at the point of trade and unhedgeable afterwards," while Ong warned that on long-held positions it can balloon a profitable trade into a loser. The asymmetry cuts the other way too: positive funding compresses quickly because stablecoin holders can arb it away, but negative funding persists when the token float is small and concentrated, as it did on Euler this year with shorts paying roughly 1% every four hours. Add the Oct. 10 crash, where exchanges socialized losses to profitable shorts because insurance funds could not absorb the other side, and the lesson is clear: perps democratized leverage, but the funding carry and the venue's margin model are the bills traders quietly keep paying.
Frequently asked questions
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Why do crypto traders prefer perpetual futures over dated futures?
Perps offer deep liquidity, lower fees, and far better margin efficiency than dated futures, which are too illiquid for most altcoins to be usable. They also let traders run longs and shorts simultaneously in hedge mode, which a venue like CME does not.
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What is a perpetual futures funding rate?
It is a recurring fee, typically charged every eight hours, that one side of the trade pays the other to keep the perp price anchored to spot. Unlike a dated futures contract, the rate floats while the position is open and cannot be locked in at entry.
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Why are negative funding rates harder to compress than positive ones?
Positive funding can be arbed away by anyone with stablecoins buying spot and shorting the perp. Negative funding requires shorting the underlying token, which only existing holders can do easily, and it becomes near-impossible when the circulating supply is small and concentrated.
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What happened during the Oct. 10 crypto crash related to perps?
Insurance funds could not absorb losses from liquidated longs, so exchanges socialized the losses by force-closing profitable shorts. The episode showed that the risk came from the exchange margin model, not from perps themselves, but it hit perp books hardest.
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How is perpification changing price discovery for other assets?
Always-on perps tied to tokenized commodities or equities let traders react to news 24/7, regardless of when the underlying market is open. Traders expect this trend to spread into more asset classes and eventually erode the case for dated futures altogether.
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