Bitnomial’s stock-perpetual rules carry Friday funding through seven weekend events

Bitnomial’s published stock-perpetual framework keeps funding running when the contract stops trading. Its securities pricing procedure, effective 4 November 2026, carries the rate calculated on Friday evening and Friday’s closing settlement price through seven scheduled funding events before a newly observed rate can first be calculated early on Monday. For a trader holding the same net position throughout a standard weekend, that means seven applications of one rate, even though there is no opportunity to trade that contract on the exchange during most of the interval.[2][3]

The schedule is contractual, rather than evidence of a malfunction or an undisclosed charge. Positive funding transfers value from longs to shorts; a negative rate reverses the direction, and a zero rate produces no payment. The rule therefore creates a weekend receipt for one side when it creates a cost for the other. It does not establish what any customer has actually paid: that would require the listed contract, its observed funding rate, position size and account records.[2]

The weekend starts before the rate is set

Rule 515 gives security futures their own trading week: Sunday at 19:00 Central Prevailing Time until Friday at 17:00, subject to holidays, maintenance and halts. Those product-specific hours matter because the exchange’s general operating hours do not determine the schedule for every instrument. On an ordinary weekend without a clock change, the interval between Friday’s close and Sunday’s reopening is 50 hours. Daylight-saving transitions can change elapsed clock time; the scheduled local funding times remain the relevant reference.[3]

Funding occurs at 03:00, 11:00 and 19:00 each calendar day. Friday’s final rate is calculated at 19:00, two hours after trading closes. The preceding nominal funding interval is eight hours, but its observation window contains only the six trading hours from 11:00 up to 17:00. Bitnomial expressly says it does not fill the closed hours with zero premiums, reach back into an earlier interval or scale the resulting rate down by six-eighths.[2]

The Sunday boundary is consequential. The procedure expressly carries the Friday values into the 19:00 funding event when normal trading resumes. A trader cannot assume that reopening itself supplies a fresh rate for that event. The first scheduled rate using observations from resumed trading is Monday at 03:00, and even that depends on the availability of the required inputs.[2]

The closing valuation is a separate step. At 17:00 on Friday, the exchange determines a settlement price using the specified two-and-a-half-minute observation period and its fallback methods. That valuation does not add an eighth funding event. It supplies the price used for Friday’s 19:00 payment and the subsequent closed-market events. Keeping those clocks separate prevents counting a closing mark as an additional financing charge.[2]

The 0.001% band does not cap the whole rate

Bitnomial calculates funding from the contract’s weighted average premium to its underlying index. With a fixed interest component of zero, it adjusts that average premium towards zero by up to 0.001 percentage point per interval. The published formula is FR = average premium + clamp(−average premium, −0.001%, +0.001%). The clamp limits the adjustment. It does not impose a 0.001% ceiling on the final funding rate.[2]

For example, a weighted premium of positive 0.011% produces a positive funding rate of 0.010% after the 0.001-percentage-point adjustment. A premium of negative 0.011% produces negative 0.010%. A premium within the adjustment band produces zero. These are hypothetical applications of the formula, not observed Bitnomial rates or forecasts of what its stock contracts will charge.[2]

The dollar formula multiplies the absolute funding rate by the net contract position, the contract multiplier and the applicable settlement price. In the example, 0.0001 multiplied by one contract, 100 shares and US$100 equals US$1. Repeating it seven times gives US$7. A tenfold rate would generate a tenfold payment on the same assumptions. The arithmetic describes exposure to a stated rate; it does not establish a typical weekend cost.[2][3]

Nor are these necessarily seven separate withdrawals from a bank account. Funding amounts are calculated separately at each event, accumulated and applied through the next applicable variation-margin cycle. A broker’s customer statement and funding arrangements determine how that clearing flow appears to the customer. The position is measured immediately before each funding time, so the fixed-position example must not be applied to an account whose net exposure has changed.[2]

Missing data and a closed market have different treatments

During open trading, the premium is sampled every 15 seconds using the eligible index price and contract order-book depth. Later observations receive larger chronological weights. With uninterrupted Friday trading from 11:00 to 17:00, the procedure uses 1,440 sample periods; the following 480 scheduled periods contribute neither observations nor weights because the contract is closed. The stated weight total for that six-hour window is 1,037,520.[2]

An unavailable input during open trading has a different consequence. If the index price is unavailable or either side of the contract book has no depth, that sample is recorded as a zero premium with its full weight. But if an entire funding interval has no sample with both an available index and determinable impact prices on both sides, the last calculated funding rate is carried forward, including its sign. Before any rate has been calculated, the fallback is zero.[2]

This distinction affects interpretation of a flat or repeated rate. Repetition can arise from scheduled closure or from the specified absence of usable observations. It cannot by itself show stable market conditions, a fresh agreement between buyers and sellers, or an exchange decision to waive funding. A full account review would match the published rates to the trading calendar and input-availability rules before attributing the result to market demand.[2]

What the rules can establish about risk

The weekend mechanism makes the last pre-close premium relevant beyond its observation window. Once normal trading has closed, the stock contract cannot be reduced through an ordinary exchange trade until reopening. A position can therefore continue to accrue a known-direction funding transfer while its underlying economic exposure remains open. That is a feature to price when deciding whether to hold through Friday, not evidence that losses are inevitable.[2][3]

The arrangement also has a coherent operational explanation: when trading is shut, it avoids fabricating new premiums from nonexistent contract activity. Carrying both the rate and valuation forward gives the clearinghouse a specified calculation. Its limitation is that those carried values do not remeasure the market during the closure. News can change the economics of the underlying stock before new trading observations enter the next calculation. The procedure’s predictability and its reliance on earlier information coexist.[2]

Funding is separate from a trading profit or loss and from any margin requirement. A short position receiving funding can still lose money if the stock rises; a long paying funding can still gain from an upward price move. Holding the settlement value fixed in a weekend example does not make the eventual reopening price fixed. The complete account outcome depends on prices, leverage, collateral, transaction costs and the broker’s liquidation arrangements as well as the funding flow.[2][3]

The regulatory position moved beyond September’s proposal

The September Federal Register notice described Bitnomial’s proposed security-futures listing standards, margins and related rules. It is no longer sufficient to describe the broader US equity-perpetual route solely as a pending September idea. On 3 November, CFTC Chairman Michael Selig announced that perpetual futures on individual securities could begin trading on designated contract markets that also hold the required SEC notice registration. Permission for a framework is still distinct from evidence that a particular Bitnomial stock contract is available through a particular broker.[1][4]

The legal classification is contested. In a 3 November order, a federal judge denied the Capital Markets Alliance Association’s request for a temporary restraining order against CFTC approvals involving Bitnomial, Kalshi and Coinbase Derivatives because the plaintiff had not demonstrated likely irreparable harm. The judge nevertheless found the plaintiff likely to succeed on its statutory-authority argument. That preliminary assessment was not a final judgment, and denial of emergency relief was not an endorsement of the contracts on the merits.[5]

For customers and brokerage risk teams, the immediate documentary question is precise: what rate, price, position and settlement cycle will apply if this contract is held across a closure? Bitnomial’s current procedure answers much of that question explicitly. The remaining evidence would be the actual listing and customer-access terms, published funding history and account-level cash flows. Until those are inspected, the defensible conclusion is a contractual seven-event carry-forward mechanism, with variable economic consequences rather than a measured customer-loss total.[2][3]

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