The ICXUSDT perpetual was delisted by four exchanges over the course of a month, starting with KuCoin on 26 August and ending with Bybit on 18 September — 23 days apart end to end.
That alone is not news. Exchanges routinely retire contracts that no longer carry enough liquidity. What makes it worth a post is something else: the four settlement price conventions are not the same, and one venue states explicitly that one more funding payment still changes hands at the moment of delisting.
The four schedules side by side
| Exchange | Contract | Delisting (UTC) | Settlement price convention |
|---|---|---|---|
| KuCoin | ICXUSDT, STORJUSDT | 2026-08-26 07:00 | Average index over the prior 30 minutes |
| OKX | ICXUSDT | 2026-09-17 08:00 | Arithmetic average index over the prior 1 hour |
| MEXC | ICX, CC1 | 2026-09-18 08:00 | “Fair price” at the time of delisting |
| OKX | ONEUSDT | 2026-09-18 08:00 | Arithmetic average index over the prior 1 hour |
| Bybit | ICXUSDT | 2026-09-18 09:00 | Average index over the prior 30 minutes |
Three conventions: a 30-minute average, a one-hour average, and a “fair price”. The longer the averaging window, the less a last-minute price spike affects you; the shorter it is, the more you are at the mercy of those few minutes. OKX adds a clause of its own: if the index behaves abnormally or is manipulated during that hour, it may adjust the final delivery price to a “reasonable level”.
A few details that get dropped in most coverage:
- KuCoin stops position opening at 06:50 while closing stays available — meaning the last ten minutes are exit-only.
- OKX restricts asset transfers out of the trading account for 30 minutes after delisting for anyone holding a position with notional value above 10,000 USDT.
- Trading bots get handled early. OKX says bots wind down gradually in the hour before delisting and advises anyone worried about slippage to stop them manually.
Our angle: the last funding payment is still collected
This is the line in the notices most easily skipped, and the one most relevant to anyone running funding. OKX puts it bluntly: no delivery fee and no additional settlement cost on delisting, but funding will be charged or paid based on the funding rate calculation at the time of delisting.
In plain terms: the contract goes away, but that period’s payment still settles, and its direction is set by the rate at that instant. If the rate happens to be negative, your short leg pays on its way out.
The amount is small. What it reveals is not: you have no choice about that final settlement. Normally you can close a second before settlement and skip a period, because funding is charged on a point-in-time snapshot — a mechanic we covered in what a funding rate is. But the delisting time is set by the exchange, and the bots have already been switched off.
What it means for a balanced two-leg position
The issue is not whether the coin falls. It is that one leg gets closed for you and the other does not.
You hold spot long plus a perpetual short. The second the contract is delisted, the short leg is settled on the exchange’s terms, while your spot leg sits on the account exactly as it was. From that second you have gone from a hedged position to a naked spot long — possibly without ever having read the announcement.
The table above makes it worse. The same symbol was retired 23 days apart across venues. If your two legs sit on different platforms, the venue that disappears first decides the day you start running naked. Other pitfalls of running across venues are listed in cross-exchange funding.
Last time we wrote about Binance removing five margin pairs, where the spot leg was the one affected. This time it is the contract leg. Either leg can be taken away unilaterally by an exchange; the announcements simply live in different sections of the site.
Why we only track four major symbols
The first question when picking a symbol is not “how high is the rate”. It is “will this contract still exist for as long as I hold it”.
The four symbols we track each settled 781 periods this year (Binance public futures API, read at 2026-09-18 07:13 UTC, latest settlement 2026-09-18 00:00 UTC):
| Symbol | Year to date | Annualised |
|---|---|---|
| BTCUSDT | 2.030026% | 2.85% |
| BNBUSDT | 2.001652% | 2.81% |
| ETHUSDT | 1.208608% | 1.70% |
| SOLUSDT | −1.030962% | −1.45% |
Read that table with the SOL row attached. Even restricting to the four deepest markets, one of them is negative this year — 390 of 781 periods sending money out. Symbols like ICX, ONE and STORJ have a more basic problem: the contract disappears before enough funding history accumulates to judge it at all.
The full selection criteria are in which coins suit funding rate arbitrage; where delisting risk lands is covered in who carries which risk and on our security page.
What to watch
No forecasts, three things you can check yourself:
- Watch the exchange’s delisting section, not your charting app. These notices go on the announcements page; they never appear on a candle. OKX published its two notices 7 days and 2 days ahead respectively.
- Read the settlement convention paragraph, not just the date. Media summaries usually carry only the date, while the averaging window and transfer restrictions are what determine your cost.
- When your legs sit on different platforms, work to the earliest venue’s calendar — not the one you normally look at.
One fair note to close on: a delisting notice is not a danger signal. It is an exchange doing the risk management it should. But for a two-leg position, the risk was never which way the price goes. It is whether both legs stop at the same second. This round did not touch the majors. That does not mean the next one will not.
Sources: exchange announcements — OKX: ICXUSDT (published 2026-09-10), OKX: ONEUSDT (published 2026-09-16), KuCoin: ICXUSDT and STORJUSDT, MEXC: ICX and CC1. The Bybit notice’s title and publication date (2026-09-16) can be verified in the Delistings section of the Bybit announcements page; its 09:00 UTC timing and 30-minute averaging detail reached us only through a Chinese-language newswire summary, which we could not reconcile word for word against the English original — treat that row as unconfirmed. Per-period funding from Binance’s public futures API (read at 2026-09-18 07:13 UTC); yearly totals on our track record page, on-site snapshot timestamp 2026-08-25 13:42 UTC.