Bitcoin Rebound Falls Flat in Perpetual-Futures Markets

Bitcoin's recent rebound has been met with a lukewarm response from traders in perpetual-futures markets. Despite the modest price increase on September 29, funding rates across major centralized and decentralized exchanges have remained neutral to slightly bearish.

Funding rates are payments made between long and short traders to keep contract prices aligned with the underlying asset. A rate of 0.01% is considered the baseline, with readings above indicating bullish positioning and below indicating bearish positioning.

After Bitcoin's move higher, the latest funding rates remained below the 0.01% baseline, suggesting that the spot-market rebound has not brought stronger demand for leveraged long positions. This leaves short positions relatively inexpensive to hold.