What's perpetual futures?
Perpetual futures, like expiry futures and options, are derivatives that track the price of an underlying asset. While perpetual futures work like expiry futures, they don’t have expiry dates, which means buyers and sellers can hypothetically keep their positions open perpetually — as long as their account holds enough margin to cover them.
Checklist
- How can I trade perpetual futures?
- Go to the perpetual futures section: visit our homepage and navigate to Trade in the top menu to see available markets. Then, select perpetual futures.
- For example, you can set up a limit order of 44,120 USDT and open a long position for “BTCUSDT Perp” with your desired BTC amount.
- On the web
- The current funding rate and countdown are shown in the trading dashboard header. Select the Funding rate / Countdown field to open a details panel with:
- On the app
Notes
The mechanism of price convergence is another key difference between perpetual futures and expiry futures contracts. With no settlement date for the former, a funding rate mechanism enforces price convergence at regular intervals. The funding rate is a fee exchanged between the long and short parties of a contract, depending on market movements, aiming to keep the contract price in line with the underlying asset’s spot price.
Our perpetual futures is a virtual derivative product where each futures contract has a unique face value and is settled in digital currencies, such as BTC, and USDT (for crypto-margined and USDT-margined futures, respectively). If you want to trade cryptocurrency perpetual futures on our platform, learn more below.
To access the Trade section on our app, log in to your account and select Trade on the bottom navigation. Select Trade to open the navigation menu, and then select Perpetual.
Transfer funds to your trading account: to trade on our platform, your funding account needs to be funded. If you don't have any balance in your funding account, select Transfer from the Assets dropdown list in the top menu to move funds between accounts.
Details follow the official OKX help article; this page is a learning checklist, not an official mirror.
