From 21 to 25 September, US spot ether ETFs took in money on five straight trading days, about $690 million in total, reversing roughly $140 million of net outflows the week before. Monday alone brought $270 million, the largest daily inflow since 7 October 2025. On the 25th, the SEC’s Division of Corporation Finance published a set of crypto FAQs, one of which says that qualifying liquid staking receipt tokens can be classed as “digital commodities”.
Both pointed ETH’s way. So what did funding on Binance’s ETHUSDT perpetual do that week? All 19 settlements were positive, and not one reached the 0.01% baseline.
ETFs: inflows every day
| Date | SoSoValue | Farside |
|---|---|---|
| 21 Sep (Mon) | $270.0m | $270.0m |
| 22 Sep (Tue) | $162.3m | $162.2m |
| 23 Sep (Wed) | $104.6m | $104.5m |
| 24 Sep (Thu) | $66.0m | $66.1m |
| 25 Sep (Fri) | about $87.0m | $87.0m |
| Total | $689.9m | $689.8m |
The two trackers differ by less than $0.2 million on any day. On SoSoValue figures, spot ether ETFs are up about $1.6 billion for the year, with $17.8 billion in net assets.
The perpetual: 19 positive settlements, the highest 0.009373%
| Settlement (UTC) | Rate | Mark price |
|---|---|---|
| 09-21 00:00 | 0.008166% | 2,643.82 |
| 09-21 08:00 | 0.008660% | 2,660.81 |
| 09-21 16:00 | 0.008935% | 2,754.00 |
| 09-22 00:00 | 0.005727% | 2,774.84 |
| 09-22 08:00 | 0.009361% | 2,725.48 |
| 09-22 16:00 | 0.005735% | 2,742.88 |
| 09-23 00:00 | 0.009373% | 2,752.67 |
| 09-23 08:00 | 0.004462% | 2,741.99 |
| 09-23 16:00 | 0.004502% | 2,655.19 |
| 09-24 00:00 | 0.005263% | 2,683.63 |
| 09-24 08:00 | 0.005176% | 2,692.05 |
| 09-24 16:00 | 0.006466% | 2,682.25 |
| 09-25 00:00 | 0.002767% | 2,686.65 |
| 09-25 08:00 | 0.003742% | 2,671.17 |
| 09-25 16:00 | 0.004924% | 2,685.72 |
| 09-26 00:00 | 0.006606% | 2,690.60 |
| 09-26 08:00 | 0.006744% | 2,689.71 |
| 09-26 16:00 | 0.005798% | 2,691.99 |
| 09-27 00:00 | 0.005712% | 2,695.46 |
The 19 settlements sum to +0.118119%, about 6.8% annualised over those periods. BTC settled at 0.01% twice in the same week. ETH has reached 0.01% in 42 of its 808 settlements this year, most recently at 00:00 UTC on 20 September, the last day before this week began.
What “below 0.01%” means
Binance’s published formula is funding = premium index + clamp(interest rate − premium index, ±0.05%), and ETHUSDT’s interest rate is 0.01% per eight hours. As long as the premium index sits between −0.04% and +0.06%, funding comes out at exactly 0.01%. A reading below 0.01% means the period’s average premium index fell below −0.04%: the perpetual was cheaper than the spot index.
So the picture for the week: ETFs bought tens to hundreds of millions of dollars of spot a day, while the perpetual traded at a discount the whole week. Spot buyers were not borrowing, and leveraged longs did not follow.
The staking side
The SEC FAQs are the views of Division of Corporation Finance staff, and the document says plainly that they are not rules and have no legal force. The relevant answer says a staking receipt token that is a receipt for a digital commodity is itself a “digital tool”, and may be classed as a “digital commodity” if issued by a protocol-based liquid staking provider.
For a two-leg position, that connects to a pair of numbers. Lido’s public API puts stETH’s seven-day average APR at 2.24%; ETH perpetual funding is at 1.39% for the year to 27 September, about 1.88% annualised over 269 days. On those two measures, staking the spot leg yields more than the perpetual leg’s funding has this year. But stETH can trade at a discount to ETH, and whether an exchange accepts it as margin is a separate question; both would change the final numbers.
What it means for a balanced position
ETH shorts collected every period this week, +0.118% across 19 settlements, just a little less than the baseline each time. ETF inflows lift spot demand; they do not turn directly into funding, which only rises once leveraged longs crowd in. ETH was negative for three months running from February to April this year, when this approach genuinely paid out, and the yearly figures are on the performance page.
What to watch
- When ETH funding gets back to 0.01%. It did not once this week.
- Whether ETF inflows continue, and whether the perpetual’s discount narrows with them.
- How liquid staking tokens can be used on exchanges. That decides whether staking yield and funding can sit in the same account. Where each kind of yield comes from is covered in funding rate arbitrage versus staking.
Sources: the weekly ETH ETF total of $689.9 million, Monday’s $270.0 million, the prior week’s roughly $140 million outflow, year-to-date inflows of about $1.6 billion and net assets of $17.8 billion are from The Block, 2026-09-26 (SoSoValue data); Monday-to-Thursday SoSoValue daily figures are from CryptoMediaClub and Farside daily figures from Smarti News; the text of the SEC Division of Corporation Finance FAQ of 2026-09-25 (Question 1.2) is from the Mondo Visione reproduction, cross-checked against The Block and Unchained; stETH’s seven-day average APR is from Lido’s public API eth-api.lido.fi/v1/protocol/steth/apr/sma, read on 2026-09-27; ETHUSDT and BTCUSDT per-period funding and mark prices come from Binance’s public USD-M endpoint fapi/v1/fundingRate, via our collection database, latest settlement 2026-09-27 00:00 UTC; the formula is from Binance’s public documentation. Annualised figures are linear extrapolations for comparison, not expected returns. Past data does not indicate future returns.