Funding Rates on Major CEX and DEX Signal Broadly Bearish Crypto Market Sentiment

Funding rates across major centralized and decentralized exchanges continued to signal an overall bearish stance in the crypto market on Dec. 18, Coinglass data cited by BlockBeats show. Funding rates are a mechanism used mainly in perpetual contracts to keep contract prices aligned with underlying asset prices through payments between long and short traders, without the trading platform charging these fees. A 0.01% funding rate is treated as the benchmark level, with readings above 0.01% associated with a broadly bullish view and levels below 0.005% reflecting a broadly bearish outlook.