Funding extremes: the most stretched perpetuals

The Shape of the Funding Landscape

Perpetual swap funding rates are one of the clearest windows into how leveraged traders are positioned across crypto markets. When funding is positive, longs are paying shorts, signaling a crowded bullish lean; when it is negative, the dynamic reverses and shorts are compensating longs for holding the other side of the trade. As of June 14, 2026, the markets captured in this dataset span a wide range of annualized funding, from SOL's -7.28% at one extreme to a cluster of smaller tokens sitting at +5.47% on the other. That spread tells a nuanced story about where conviction—and contrarian pressure—is currently concentrated.

SOL Stands Alone on the Negative Side

The most striking data point in this snapshot is SOL, which carries an annualized funding rate of -7.28%, making it the only market in this set where shorts are the dominant paying party. With open interest of $1.7B, this is not a thin or illiquid market where a handful of trades can distort the rate; there is meaningful capital behind the skew. A leverage risk score of 17 suggests that, while positioning is directionally one-sided toward net short, the aggregate leverage burden is not at extreme levels. The persistence of negative funding at this magnitude implies that a meaningful cohort of leveraged participants has been willing to pay a running cost to maintain short exposure in SOL, or alternatively that cash-and-carry and basis traders are absorbing long-side risk at a discount to the neutral rate.

A Cluster of Small-Cap Longs

At the opposite end of the spectrum, MOG, BABYDOGE, YGG, and TNSR all register identical annualized funding of +5.47%. The uniformity of this figure across four distinct assets is itself notable and likely reflects either a common exchange floor for funding calculations or a market structure in which demand for leveraged long exposure has pushed each of these tokens to the same effective ceiling within their respective venues. The open interest figures for these markets are modest—$913,198 for MOG, $323,021 for BABYDOGE, $325,862 for YGG, and $354,189 for TNSR—which means the cost of funding is being borne across a comparatively small base of capital. In thin markets, sustained positive funding can reflect speculative enthusiasm rather than deep structural conviction, and the concentration of longs paying at this rate indicates that bullish participants are accepting a meaningful annualized drag to hold leveraged exposure.

BCH Occupies the Mid-Large Positive Range

BCH presents a different profile: an annualized funding rate of +5.26% across an open interest base of $72.5M. This positions it clearly in the positive-funding camp but with considerably more market depth than the micro-cap cluster above it. The +5.26% rate indicates that longs remain the net payers in BCH perpetuals, though the magnitude is only marginally below the small-cap group. For a market of this size, sustained positive funding implies that leveraged long positioning has not been aggressively arbitraged away, which can reflect either a lack of willing short-side capital or continued directional demand from traders who accept the funding cost as worth the exposure.

ETH and BTC Anchor the Liquid Middle

ETH and BTC, the two deepest markets in this dataset by open interest, offer a study in contrast. ETH carries annualized funding of +3.23%, sitting at the 54th percentile of its own 90-day distribution, which places it just above the historical midpoint—a modestly bullish lean that is not extreme by recent standards. Its open interest of $7.7B and a leverage risk score of 7 suggest that while longs are paying, the aggregate positioning is far from stretched. BTC, meanwhile, shows annualized funding of -0.67%, placing it at the 24th percentile of its 90-day range. That percentile context is important: BTC's slightly negative funding is not anomalous for the asset in recent history, and the reading indicates that the market is closer to neutral with a mild short-side tilt rather than in any pronounced directional extreme. Its open interest of $13.9B is the largest in this dataset, and a leverage risk score of 35—higher than ETH's 7—suggests that while funding is near flat, the absolute leverage embedded in BTC positions warrants monitoring.

What the Spread Implies About Aggregate Positioning

Taken together, this dataset reveals a fragmented positioning picture across the perpetuals landscape. SOL is the clearest outlier, with deeply negative funding pointing to a net short lean among leveraged participants in one of the larger liquid altcoin markets. The small-cap tokens are uniformly positioned in the opposite direction, with longs paying at the top of the observed range but across negligible open interest. BCH occupies a middle ground with meaningful but not extreme positive funding and a moderate market size. The two largest markets, ETH and BTC, sit close to neutral, with ETH carrying a slight long bias and BTC tilted marginally negative. The absence of a uniform directional signal across this set underscores that funding extremes in this cycle are asset-specific rather than reflecting a broad market-wide consensus.