Exchange Funding Rate Comparison: Mar 25, 2026

Three exchanges. 92,953 settlements. Seven days of data. The short-bias deepened.

The Data

All three exchanges posted negative average rates for the week ending March 25. Shorts are being paid; the net market bias is bearish. No exchange shows a positive average — a clean sweep last seen in mid-February.

Settlement Volume Shift

KuCoin now leads on settlement count at 38,949, surpassing Binance (29,706) and Bybit (24,298) by a wide margin. A week ago, these three were closer. The shift reflects KuCoin's aggressive symbol expansion — 521 active symbols, the most in the dataset — combined with shorter settlement intervals on a subset of contracts.

Combined, the three exchanges processed 92,953 settlements this week. That's up from the 77,137 recorded in the March 18 snapshot when Hyperliquid was also in the dataset. The absence of Hyperliquid from this week's data is notable; it accounted for roughly 27,938 settlements then.

KuCoin: Negative Median Persists

KuCoin is the only exchange with a negative median rate this week (-0.0055%). This matters. The median tells you what a randomly selected settlement looks like; for Binance and Bybit it's +0.005%, the exchange-minimum floor for a positive-bias settlement. For KuCoin, the typical settlement is negative.

That means short bias on KuCoin isn't a tail story. It's the base case across the majority of its 521 symbols. The average rate of -0.0122% is pulled further negative by outliers, but the direction is structural, not statistical noise.

Volatility at 0.1189% is the highest in the dataset, consistent with prior weeks. KuCoin's long tail of small-cap perpetuals generates the bulk of extreme events.

Binance: Stability at Scale

Binance processed 29,706 settlements across 457 symbols — fewer symbols than Bybit, but higher volume, which implies more frequent settlement intervals on core contracts. The average rate of -0.0082% is the least negative of the three, and the median holds at +0.005%, the exchange floor.

Volatility of 0.0633% is the lowest this week. For context, that's roughly 5x lower than KuCoin. Binance's tighter symbol selection and deeper liquidity compress rate swings. The tails are smaller. Settlements cluster near zero with occasional sharp deviations on narrative-driven tokens.

Bybit: Catching Up to KuCoin

Bybit at 24,298 settlements has the smallest count but its average rate (-0.0119%) is nearly identical to KuCoin (-0.0122%). The median, however, stays at +0.005% — matching Binance. The divergence between mean and median is wider on Bybit this week than on Binance: the negative average is driven by a harder-hitting tail, not a general pessimism across the book.

Volatility of 0.1064% sits between KuCoin and Binance. Bybit appears to be running a hybrid book: major pairs behave like Binance, the tail acts like KuCoin.

The Outlier Event: -2% Floor Hits

The last 24 hours produced a cluster of maximum-negative settlements. ONTUSDT printed -2% on all three exchanges simultaneously at the 12:00 UTC settlement on March 24 — the floor rate, capped by exchange risk limits. KuCoin also flagged A2ZUSDT and FORTHUSDT at -2%, -43.8% APR on 4-hour intervals.

Floor-rate events across multiple exchanges in the same symbol at the same time are rare. They indicate a coordinated short pressure event: open interest is heavily short-weighted, and the mechanism is hitting its hard cap. These events typically resolve quickly as arbitrageurs open longs to collect the rate, or as the underlying price recovers. When they persist across consecutive settlements, they signal something structural.

ONTUSDT floor events across Binance, Bybit, and KuCoin warrant monitoring through this week.

Cross-Exchange Rate Spread

The spread between the most negative average (KuCoin, -0.0122%) and the least negative (Binance, -0.0082%) is 4 basis points per settlement. Annualized over 8-hour intervals, this is approximately 43.8% APR in differential funding cost.

That spread is tighter than last week's 14.7 bps gap (which included Hyperliquid's near-zero average). Within the CEX-only cohort, Binance remains the cheapest exchange to hold short exposure.

Regime Read

The March 18 snapshot showed all four exchanges negative. March 25 shows all three remaining exchanges negative, with the average magnitude stable: last week's combined mean (excluding Hyperliquid) was approximately -0.0123%. This week: -0.0108% weighted by settlement count. Slight improvement, but still firmly in bearish territory.

The market has been in a negative funding regime for at least two consecutive weeks. Historically, prolonged negative regimes across all major exchanges either resolve through a price recovery (longs re-enter, rates normalize) or deepen into capitulation (rates stay negative, shorts continue to be paid).

If Binance's rate median holds at +0.005% while KuCoin's median stays negative through next week, the structural divergence between the two exchanges will be worth watching for cross-venue positioning.

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Watch ONTUSDT funding rate recovery across exchanges — floor hits at -2% that persist beyond 48 hours historically precede sharp mean-reversion events.

Related reading:

• Exchange Funding Rate Comparison: Mar 18, 2026 — last week's cross-exchange snapshot for comparison
• Funding Rates Are Prediction Markets — why cross-exchange funding data reveals structural edges
• How the OU Model Predicts Funding Rates — the model that prices Settled's markets
• Browse All Markets — trade funding rate outcomes across all three exchanges