Research ·
Funding: the cost our headline number leaves out
Every backtest figure on this site says "funding not included". So we added it: Binance's real funding history for all ten coins since 2021. It costs about 2.7% of the account a year, most of it in 2021. The return drops from 45.7% to 41.8% a year.
Every backtest number on this site carries the same small print: funding not included. That's a real gap. Perpetual futures charge funding every eight hours, and a strategy that holds positions for days pays it again and again. So we measured it.
What funding is
A perpetual future has no expiry date, so the exchange keeps its price close to the real coin with a payment between the two sides every eight hours on Binance. When more people want to be long, the rate is positive and longs pay shorts. When the crowd is short, it turns negative and shorts pay longs. The rate is small, usually 0.01% per eight hours, but it's charged on the whole position, three times a day.
Across our ten coins from January 2021 to September 2026, the average rate was 0.0080% per eight hours. Someone holding a long position all the time would have paid about 8.8% of the position a year.
What we did
We downloaded Binance's full funding history for BTC, ETH, BNB, XRP, SOL, DOGE, ADA, LINK, AVAX and DOT: about 6,300 funding payments per coin since 1 January 2021. Then we replayed the backtest of the bot's live rules and charged or credited every payment on whatever the bot held at that moment.
What it cost
| Year | Funding paid (% of account) |
|---|---|
| 2021 | 8.22% |
| 2022 | 2.06% |
| 2023 | 1.64% |
| 2024 | 2.13% |
| 2025 | 0.89% |
| 2026 (to Sep) | 0.64% |
| Average per year | 2.72% |
More than half of the total came from 2021. In a roaring bull market everyone wants to be long, rates climb far above normal, and a trend bot that is long exactly then pays the most. From 2022 to 2024 it cost about 2% a year, and less than 1% in 2025 and 2026.
We expected the short positions to earn funding back. They didn't: longs paid about 2.5% a year and shorts paid about 0.25% a year as well. The bot tends to go short when the market is already falling, and that's when the crowd is short too and rates turn negative. Following the trend means paying the crowd's price for it.
* 2026 runs to 27 September. Hypothetical backtest of the live rules, 0.07% cost per trade.
The corrected numbers
| Jan 2021 – Sep 2026 | Without funding | With funding |
|---|---|---|
| Return per year | 45.7% | 41.8% |
| Worst drop | −18.5% | −18.8% |
| 2025 | 7.0% | 6.0% |
About four points a year, and most of it in one exceptional year. It doesn't change the picture, but 41.8% is the more honest backtest figure, and from now on we quote both.
One thing the replay doesn't include
The live bot has a funding filter: it won't open or add to a position on the side paying more than 0.1% per eight hours (about 110% a year). This replay doesn't apply it, so it may slightly overstate the cost in a year like 2021, when rates spiked that high. We haven't tested whether the filter helps overall; it exists to stop the bot, and anyone copying it, from walking into the most expensive positions of a mania.
The code is research/blog_facts.py in the bot's repository. The live accounts pay real funding, and it's already inside every number on the performance page.