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Terminal

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Funding rates and open interest, for spot traders

A spot trade buys or sells the coin. A perpetual future tracks that coin and does not expire on a date. Two numbers from that market show up beside spot prices: the funding rate, and open interest. A spot trade does not pay funding. This page says what the numbers count. It does not say what the spot price will do next, and it does not tell you to buy, sell, or hold.

Funding is a payment between the two sides

Kraken's "US Perpetual Futures" page, opened 2026-10-11, describes a perpetual as a futures contract with no expiration date. It uses a funding rate to keep the contract price in line with the spot market. The direction on that page is specific.

When the perpetual trades above spot, longs pay shorts. When the perpetual trades below spot, shorts pay longs. The payment is between the holders of the long and the short. Kraken says it is not a fee the exchange collects. The rate can be positive or negative. The page says the rate is calculated from the difference between the perpetual price and the spot price. Payments are aggregated and settled as one cash adjustment at 3:00 PM CT each day. If the available balance does not cover a payment, the amount is drawn from position margin.

A spot balance does not receive that cash adjustment. If you do not hold the perpetual, you do not pay or receive that funding. The rate still says, at that venue and time, which side of the open perpetual is paying the other.

The contracts on that page are listed on Bitnomial and traded through Kraken Derivatives US. Brokerage services are provided by NinjaTrader Clearing, LLC, doing business as Kraken Derivatives US, a CFTC-registered futures commission merchant and NFA member, NFA ID 0309379. The page said 16 contracts were available at launch, quoted in USD, including perpetual Bitcoin, Ether, and Solana. Collateral at launch was USD only. Trading is 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with maintenance windows. The order form and the contract details show the current funding rate and the next funding rate before a trade.

Other fees are listed separately: an exchange fee collected by Bitnomial, an NFA fee, a clearing fee, and a commission. Those appear in the order preview. Funding does not, except as the rate visible on the order form. A liquidation fee of $10 applies if you are trading perpetual futures only. If you also hold other futures, the page lists $25 for the first event and $50 for each later event.

Kraken says an unpaid funding draw on margin can push a derivatives account toward liquidation. That line is about a leveraged perpetual, not a spot holding.

The interval is part of the number

A funding percent is hard to read until you know how often it is paid. On the Kraken US page, the cash adjustment is once a day, at 3:00 PM CT. A percent on a venue that pays every hour is a different object, even when the numerals match.

This check did not open a second venue's funding specification. Other Kraken lines exist for other regions, and those pages were not used. A clear label names the venue, the contract, the percent, the interval, and the time.

Open interest counts contracts still open

CME Group's education page "Open Interest" returned HTTP 403 to a direct fetch on 2026-10-11. The public search index of that page, retrieved the same day, defines open interest as the total number of futures contracts held by market participants at the end of the trading day. The same index says volume counts contracts that have been traded, while open interest is the total of contracts that remain open. CME's market-data page on volume and open interest also returned HTTP 403. Its search index says each open transaction has a buyer and a seller, but only one side is counted, and that open interest is contracts entered into and not yet offset.

A new contract is one long and one short. Open interest rises by one, not by two. When both sides close, it falls by one. A transfer changes who holds the contract. It does not, by itself, change how many are outstanding. That wording is from the search index, because the CME pages returned HTTP 403. It is a definition of listed futures, not a live print.

Crypto venues often refresh a figure they also call open interest during the session, not only at the end of the day. Read the timestamp, the venue, and the contract. "Rose" without those three is not checkable. Kraken's US perpetual page does not define open interest and does not publish a current number. This article does not fill that gap.

The two numbers are not the spot price

Funding, open interest, and the spot price can move apart. Funding can sit near zero while the spot price moves. Open interest can change because contracts opened or closed, without your spot trade changing. None of that assigns a direction to the spot coin.

A shortcut says a positive funding rate means there are more longs. Kraken's page does not say that. It says longs pay shorts when the perpetual is above spot. The payment follows the premium. It is not a count of accounts. An alert can state the rate and the open-interest change. It misleads when it adds a crowd, a mood, or a next price.

A clear funding message names the contract, the venue, the rate, the interval, the source, and the time. It does not call the rate expensive or cheap. A clear open-interest message names the contract and the window, and it uses two stored readings. If a reading is missing, the alert waits. A zero is not a stand-in for a missing count. The spot alert still rests on the spot price. The derivatives lines are facts about another market. Robinhood's price-alert article says its notices are not a recommendation to buy, sell, or hold. The same boundary fits these lines.

Terminal describes a funding rate or an open-interest change only when it has that feed. It names the source and the time. It does not tell you to buy, sell, or hold.

FAQ

Do I pay funding if I only trade spot?

Not on the spot trade. On the Kraken US page, funding is a payment between perpetual longs and shorts, settled once at 3:00 PM CT. It is not an exchange fee, and it is not applied to a spot balance you do not hold a perpetual on.

Why can't two funding percents be compared directly?

The interval is part of the number. Kraken US settles once a day. A venue on another clock publishes a different measurement, even when the numerals match.

Is open interest the same as volume?

No. The CME search index, after the pages returned HTTP 403, defines open interest as contracts still held and volume as contracts traded. Only one side of each open contract is counted. This article does not quote a live open-interest number.

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