Anyone betting on a rising Ether in the futures market has paid nothing for the privilege since Saturday evening. The funding rate for the ETH perpetual contract on OKX stands at minus 0.00002 percent for the period up to midnight, which arithmetically is zero. It is the first non-positive reading since October 13. Over the seven days before that, buyers paid an average of 0.00579 percent per eight-hour period, or 6.34 percent annualised.
Two things are documented by this: the surcharge for leveraged long positions has disappeared, and the spot price stands at $2,300.13 on Saturday, October 24, at around 6:40 p.m., 4.47 percent below its level 24 hours earlier. Our assessment sits further down in a section of its own, and in one sentence it runs: the vanished premium shows that speculation on rising prices has thinned out, but it is no buy signal.
Where the price can point on a horizon of months is set out in our Ethereum price prediction. This article looks at the futures market, the side that price reports usually leave out.
Ether at $2,300, the funding rate at zero
Ether was quoted at $2,300.13 on Saturday evening. The day’s high stood at $2,410.06, the day’s low at $2,286.76 according to CoinGecko data, and on Kraken as low as $2,279.80. The market value of all circulating Ether comes to $280.9 billion, trading volume over the past 24 hours to $9.39 billion. The all-time high of $4,946.05 sits 53.5 percent above the price.
The figure that separates this day from the preceding ones does not sit in the price, though, but in the perpetual contract. There, buyers and sellers pay each other, three times a day. Once that payment falls to zero, neither side carries a surcharge any more.
How the funding rate works and who pays it
A perpetual contract, a perpetual in market jargon, is a futures contract without an expiry date. To stop its price drifting away from spot, one side pays the other every eight hours: if the contract trades above spot, the buyers pay, if it trades below, the sellers pay. That payment is the funding rate. It is no fee model of the exchange, but a price the market forms itself.
In terms of interpretation: a high positive rate shows that many are betting on rising prices with leverage and are willing to pay for it. A rate at zero shows that this overhang has been worked off. That is exactly what happened on Saturday, and without any news behind it.
What the three periods of this day show
The three already settled periods of October 24 came in at 0.00188 percent at 00:00, 0.00904 percent at 08:00 and 0.00229 percent at 16:00 UTC. The value for the period up to midnight stands at minus 0.00002 percent. The rate has therefore fallen from its high to zero over the course of the day, in parallel with the slide in the price from $2,410 to $2,300. The current values are public on OKX’s funding overview.
6.34 percent a year: what holding a long position has cost so far
With four zeros after the decimal point, the rate sounds like nothing. Extrapolated, it is not. At 0.00579 percent per eight-hour period, it falls due three times a day and therefore 1,095 times a year. That works out at 6.34 percent annualised, measured against the contract size and not against the capital put up.
An example with numbers: hold a long position of $10,000 in ETH at five times leverage and you put up $2,000 of your own money. Funding is measured against the $10,000, so over the past week it cost around $634 a year, or $1.74 a day. Against your own capital that is 31.7 percent a year, before the price has moved at all. At a rate of zero this item disappears, until the rate picks up again.
The level of the rate differs from exchange to exchange, because each runs its own contract and its own index. Traders using leverage look up the terms and the settlement times in their platform’s contract specification. Some settle funding hourly rather than every eight hours.
Open interest: $1.44 billion in ETH, $2.43 billion in Bitcoin
The second figure of the futures market is the sum of all open contracts, the open interest. In the ETH perpetual on OKX, 624,274 Ether are open, $1.44 billion at the current price. In the Bitcoin equivalent it is 30,429 BTC and therefore $2.43 billion.
Ether thus carries around 59 percent of Bitcoin’s volume in the perpetual, while its market value amounts to only about one sixth. Measured against market value, leverage is stacked considerably more densely on Ether than on Bitcoin. That explains why ETH regularly gives way more sharply on sell-off days: there are more debt-financed positions in place which have to be closed when prices fall.
The options market prices in 55 percent volatility, 39 for Bitcoin
Besides the perpetual, a third source says something about the days ahead: the options market. For that, Deribit publishes the DVOL index, which gives the expected volatility on an annual basis as derived from options prices. For Ether it stood at 55.0 points on Saturday at 18:00, after 51.6 twenty-four hours earlier and 50.7 three days ago. For Bitcoin it stood at 39.1 points.
The gap of 15.9 points is the actual statement. The options market demands a markedly higher risk premium for Ether than for Bitcoin, and this premium has risen over the past three days rather than fallen. The current values are on Deribit’s DVOL page.
What 55 points mean in dollars
The expected daily move can be derived from the annual figure by dividing it by the square root of 365. Fifty-five points give 2.88 percent a day, so around $66 at a price of $2,300. Over a week it comes to 7.6 percent, or $175. A leveraged position whose liquidation price sits less than 8 percent away is, by this calculation, within the range of a normal weekly swing.
The levels: $2,279, the 100-day line at $2,311 and the 200-day line at $2,156
For the levels in this article we recalculated Kraken’s daily closing prices over 721 trading days ourselves. The result, as of Saturday evening:
- 20-day line: $2,469.98, with the price 6.73 percent below it.
- 50-day line: $2,545.29, a distance of 9.49 percent. Ether has been quoted below this line for the 17th day running.
- 100-day line: $2,311.21, a distance of only 0.32 percent. That is the level the price is standing at right now.
- 200-day line: $2,156.35, with the price 6.84 percent above it.
The 100-day line is therefore the level for the start of the week. If Ether closes above it, the zone between $2,311 and the 50-day line stays the target. If the price falls below the day’s low of $2,279.80, the next well-founded stop is the 200-day line at $2,156, roughly 6 percent lower. The 30-day high sits at $2,776.46 and therefore 20.7 percent above today’s price.
What has changed since the options expiry article of October 23
On Friday we reported here on the options expiry of October 30, at which 322,586 ETH run out. That assessment still stands in our analysis of the October 30 expiry date. Three things have changed since then.
First the price: the daily close stood at $2,384.52 on October 23 and at $2,303.76 on October 24. That is 3.39 percent in a single day. Second the deadline: six days now remain to expiry, so the date is moving into the window in which traders roll or close their positions. Third the funding: on Friday, long positions cost between 0.00515 and 0.00686 percent across all three periods, and today nothing at all.
Add to that a piece of news from Saturday morning which we covered separately: the Glamsterdam activation planned for October 26 on the Hoodi testnet was called off. For the price question in this article that changes nothing, for the network’s roadmap it does.
Holding period and tax: why the purchase date counts now
For investors in Germany, more hangs on the difference between spot and perpetual than leverage alone. Buy Ether directly and hold it and you fall under the one-year holding period for private assets: once a year has passed, gains from a sale are tax-free, and within the year they are taxable as soon as the threshold is exceeded. Trade a perpetual instead and you are in the territory of forward transactions, for which this period does not apply.
In practical terms: the purchase date of every single addition is the most important record in the portfolio, and it has to be documented with a timestamp. We keep track of the current state of the reform debate on our page on the holding period. A portfolio tracker that counts the periods for each tranche saves you the reconstruction from bank statements if it comes to that; the programs are in the comparison of tax tools.
Routes to a purchase under MiCA: exchange, broker or perpetual
Since the EU’s MiCA regulation took full effect, providers of crypto services need an authorisation that is valid in every member state. For the choice of provider, that means less guesswork about where a company is registered and more comparability of obligations. Three routes lead to an Ether position, and they are not the same thing in tax or in technical terms.
A purchase on an authorised exchange with a subsequent withdrawal into your own custody brings real coins, the holding period and the responsibility for the recovery words. A purchase through a broker without a withdrawal option brings a claim against the provider. The perpetual brings no coins, but leverage, funding costs and a liquidation price. Which route fits is decided by the investment horizon, not by the day’s move.
Our assessment: what argues for and against a floor forming
In the view of this newsroom, the funding rate having fallen to zero is the better argument for the bears, not the bulls. The situation in the options market supports that reading: the DVOL for Ether has risen from 50.7 to 55.0 points in three days, and the gap to Bitcoin, at 15.9 points, is wide. When speculation on rising prices has been worked off and the volatility priced in nevertheless increases, the market is expecting movement without a clear direction.
The arithmetic in the spot market argues against it: the price sits 6.84 percent above the 200-day line, and the 100-day line at $2,311.21 runs 0.32 percent above the current level. As long as these two lines hold, the sell-off is a correction within an intact longer uptrend and no trend reversal. The first daily close of the new week becomes the decisive one: above $2,311 the correction reading stays in place, below $2,279.80 the 200-day line becomes the target.
What we are not claiming: that the rate at zero marks the floor. In October it was negative on the 11th, 12th and 13th as well, and the price fell further afterwards. A single period is a data point, not a signal. This is an assessment of the situation and no recommendation to buy or sell; a total loss is possible at any time with crypto-assets.
Funding rate at zero: the picture only turns above $2,311
Three steps follow from this day’s figures.
- Look up the funding costs of your own position. The rate is formed separately for each exchange and each contract and settled three times a day. Traders holding with leverage weigh the distance to their liquidation price against the expected weekly swing of 7.6 percent. The terms are in the comparison of perp DEXs.
- Secure the purchase date for each tranche. The one-year holding period applies per addition, not per portfolio. A tracker that keeps tranches and periods is in the comparison of tax tools.
- Note the two levels. $2,311.21 as the 100-day line and $2,279.80 as the day’s low. Those who buy in at fixed amounts place the execution on one of these levels instead of on a round number. Authorised trading venues are in the comparison of crypto exchanges.
(As of October 24, 2026. This article is not investment advice. Prices and fee structures change; check the terms with the provider before you buy.)
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