{"slug":"perpetual-futures","term":"Perpetual Futures","category":"Derivatives","definition":"Perpetual futures are derivatives contracts with no expiry date: you can hold a leveraged long or short indefinitely. Instead of settling at expiry, perps stay tethered to spot through funding payments exchanged between longs and shorts, every 4 or 8 hours on most pairs. They dominate crypto trading, with volumes several times larger than spot.","street":"A futures contract that never expires — you can stay wrong forever, as long as you keep paying for it.","depth":["A perp replaces the expiry mechanism with a rolling fee. You post margin, pick leverage, and hold as long as your collateral survives; the funding payment (every 8 hours on most pairs, 4h or 1h on many) nudges the perp's price back toward the spot index whenever it drifts. Your PnL and liquidation are calculated on mark price, not last price — the last traded price is just where orders happened to meet.","The trap isn't the product, it's what \"no expiry\" does to discipline. A dated future forces you to be right by a date; a perp lets you average down forever — until funding drains you or one wick doesn't come back. Holding a levered long through weeks of positive funding means paying rent to sit on the crowded side. Perps are the right tool for defined trades with defined invalidation; as a buy-and-hope vehicle they're a slow leak attached to a fast trapdoor."],"live":{"label":"See what your perp costs to hold","href":"/tools/funding-rates"},"related":["funding-rate","mark-price","basis","leverage"]}