Writing samples — Konstantin

Unpublished samples written for a Web3 content application. No hype, real numbers, aimed at someone who is new to the subject.

Sample 1 · X thread (7 posts)

Why your funding rate is quietly eating your perpetual position

1/Perpetual futures never expire. So how does the price stay near spot? The answer is funding — and it is the most underestimated cost on any leveraged position. A short thread.

2/Every 8 hours the exchange compares the perp price to the index price. If the perp trades above the index, longs pay shorts. If it trades below, shorts pay longs. That payment is the funding rate.

3/A typical rate is 0.01% per 8 hours. That sounds like nothing. It compounds to 0.03% per day, which is roughly 11% a year — charged on the full notional, not on your margin.

4/Concrete numbers. A $10,000 position at 10x uses $1,000 of margin. Funding at 0.03% a day costs $3 daily, about $90 a month. Your position now has to earn 9% on margin just to stand still.

5/In euphoric markets funding can spike to 0.1% per 8 hours. That is 0.3% a day — over 100% a year on notional. At that point longs are not holding a position. They are paying rent on it.

6/What to do with this:
• check the rate before sizing
• on a multi-day hold, anything above 0.05% per 8h is a real cost
• if you are short while funding is positive, you are being paid to wait

7/Funding is not exotic. It is the price of leverage, billed every eight hours. Ignore it and your edge quietly leaks out through a line nobody looks at.

Sample 2 · Beginner explainer

Perpetual futures vs futures: the difference that actually matters

Both let you trade an asset without holding it. Both use leverage. The difference comes down to one word: expiry.

A traditional future has a settlement date. On that date the contract converges to the spot price, and the position closes. That convergence is what keeps the future anchored to reality — if it drifts too far, traders arbitrage it back before settlement.

A perpetual future has no settlement date. There is no deadline to force the price back. So the exchange invents one, and charges it every eight hours.

That charge is the funding rate. When the perp trades above spot, longs pay shorts, which makes holding a long expensive and pulls the price back down. When it trades below, shorts pay longs. It is a small, continuous payment that does the job expiry used to do.

This is why perpetuals dominate crypto volume: no rollover, no expiry dates to manage, you can hold as long as your margin survives. The trade-off is that the position now has a running cost that a spot holder does not pay at all.

For a trader, that means the funding rate belongs in the same place as fees and slippage — not in a section you scroll past. A position that is 11% a year expensive to hold needs a correspondingly bigger edge to be worth holding at all.

What to remember: futures pay to converge once, at expiry. Perpetuals pay to stay anchored every eight hours, forever. Same idea, very different bill.

Two pieces about how crypto actually works

Why your funding rate is quietly eating your perpetual position

Perpetual futures vs futures: the difference that actually matters