Several market sites reviewing Monday’s ETH session on 22 September printed the same figure: a funding rate of 0.0089%, described as leverage building without longs being crowded. The same write-ups had ETH futures volume up 67.53% to $63.88bn and open interest up 8.21% to $36.47bn.
We checked that figure against our own records. It reconciles — for exactly one period.
There were actually three numbers that day
Binance ETHUSDT settled three times on 21 September (UTC):
| Settlement | Rate | Mark price |
|---|---|---|
| 00:00 | 0.008166% | 2,643.82 |
| 08:00 | 0.008660% | 2,660.81 |
| 16:00 | 0.008935% | 2,754.00 |
Rounded, the 16:00 print is 0.0089%. So the quoted number is real — it refers to the last period of the day.
All three together come to 0.025761%. A reader treating 0.0089% as “today’s funding” and computing a return from it undercounts by two periods; treating it as an average level and extrapolating a year overcounts.
Widen the window
ETHUSDT from 16 September 00:00 to 23 September 00:00 (UTC), 22 settlements:
- Cumulative 0.129776%
- Mean per period 0.005899%, median 0.005731%
- High 0.010000% (the baseline, touched four times), low −0.004012%
- 2 of the 22 periods were negative, both on 16 September
The week’s mean period, 0.005899%, is two thirds of the quoted print. Neither number is wrong; they answer different questions.
Three things to ask about any quoted funding rate
- Which period. Three settlements a day (some contracts run six or twenty-four), so a single print and a daily total differ by a factor of three or more.
- Which venue. Many market sites publish an open-interest-weighted composite across exchanges rather than any one venue’s actual settlement. Every number here comes from Binance ETHUSDT’s per-settlement records.
- Which convention. Per period, per day, annualised — the same funding series written differently lands far apart. Multiply 0.0089% by 3 and then by 365 and you get a figure noticeably above this week’s actual readings.
What it means for a two-leg book
What actually arrives is the per-period accumulation, not any single print. This is also why we publish the summed convention rather than an annualised single period: the first can be reconciled line by line, the second is a snapshot.
For what it is worth, reading 0.0089% as “leverage building, not overheated” is fair — it is below the 0.01% baseline. The conclusion just holds up better on a 22-period weekly mean than on one print.
What to watch
Whether ETH starts printing at the 0.01% baseline period after period. It touched it four times this week, with two negative periods in between.
Sources
External: tradingnews.com and xinvestnews.com (2026-09-22, both citing a 21 September funding rate of 0.0089%, futures volume $63.88bn and open interest $36.47bn). Per-settlement rates and mark prices from Binance ETHUSDT records in our FundingRateTicks table, as of 2026-09-23 00:00 UTC.