BTC and ETH Funding Rates Turn Negative Across Major Exchanges as Bearish Sentiment Outweighs Altcoins

Bitcoin and Ethereum perpetual contract funding rates turned negative across nearly all tracked platforms on Feb. 2, while most altcoin contracts maintained positive rates, Coinglass data cited by BlockBeats show. The divergence indicates stronger bearish positioning in BTC and ETH compared to altcoins in the crypto derivatives market. Funding rates, a perpetual contract mechanism that redistributes payments between long and short traders to anchor contract prices to spot levels, typically use 0.01% as the base rate, with levels above signaling bullish sentiment and rates below 0.005% reflecting broadly bearish conditions.