Funding
Funding is the only reading here that does not come from the price chart. On a perpetual contract one side pays the other every settlement interval, and the sign says which side is crowded: positive means longs pay shorts, so leverage has piled up on the long side. A crowded side is the side that gets liquidated first.
What is a funding rate?
A perpetual futures contract has no expiry, so exchanges keep its price tied to spot with a periodic payment between traders: when the contract trades above spot the longs pay the shorts, and when it trades below the shorts pay the longs. The rate is quoted per settlement interval, which is 8 hours on most venues. It is paid between traders, not to the exchange.
What does a high positive funding rate mean?
That longs are paying to stay long, which means leverage has piled up on the buy side. It is read contrarian: a crowded side is the first to be liquidated when price moves against it, and those liquidations feed the move. On the coins tracked here the median rate sits near 0.005% per interval, so anything past 0.03% is already in the tail of the distribution and past 0.1% is what traders call overheated.
Does funding predict the price?
No. It measures positioning right now - how crowded a side is and what it costs to stay there - not direction. On this site it trims the momentum part of the signal score by at most 5 points once the rate is in the tail, and it raises the risk score when the crowded side is the same side as the setup. It is information, not investment advice.
Everything being said in English right now, with a link to the coin it was said on.
Kk