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Athenum Analytics

Athenum Analytics

Wisdom Over Chaos

103 articles
Athenum horizontal bar chart ranking eight ways to change Bitcoin's realized volatility number, each measured on the identical 90 day window of Binance BTCUSDT ending 2026-08-21. The bars read: sampling error 95 per cent interval 17.32 points, annualising with 365 or with 252 6.85, which UTC hour you call the close 6.42 drawn in grey and labelled as inside its own null with a median of 7.25, estimator choice at a median of 4.95 across 45 rolling 91 day windows with a blue whisker beneath it spanning its 0.29 to 15.57 range and quartile ticks, sampling every 5 minutes or once a day 2.20, dividing by n or by n minus 1 0.23, and which of five order books you sample 0.14. A note in the corner gives the point estimate 40.53 per cent and the 95 per cent interval 31.46 to 48.78

Bitcoin Realized Volatility Is 40.5 Percent, Plus or Minus 9

Realized volatility is published everywhere as a single number and almost never with an interval. We measured Bitcoin's, then measured how much every choice behind it moves the answer. The question here is whether a whole window summary statistic stays put when you re-partition the same tape, which is a different question from whether the hour of day carries return, and we treat it as such throughout.

Athenum AnalyticsAthenum Analytics
22 min
Athenum two panel scatter chart of every settled Binance BTCUSDT funding rate from September 2019 to 2026-08-20, 7,609 settlements. The upper panel plots them against dashed cap and floor lines at plus and minus 0.300 per cent per 8 hours, with a single circled point touching the cap on 2020-02-12 and a single circled point touching the floor on 2020-03-13; every other settlement sits far inside the band. The lower panel redraws the identical series on an axis clipped to plus or minus 0.026 per cent, where the 0.0100 per cent interest anchor shows up as a level the settlements stop at in 2022, 2025 and 2026 while 2023 and 2024 still print above it

Funding Rate Cap: Once on Bitcoin in Seven Years, Routinely on the Long Tail

Every crypto perpetual publishes a maximum funding rate, and almost nobody checks how often it is actually reached. Across all 7,609 settlements of Binance's BTCUSDT perpetual, the cap was reached once, on 2020-02-12, and the floor once, on 2020-03-13. Smaller contracts reach theirs dozens of times a year, and reaching it does not cap the bill: on Binance, OKX and Bybit it switches the contract to hourly settlement, which multiplies the daily ceiling by eight.

Athenum AnalyticsAthenum Analytics
21 min
Athenum scatter chart of the annualised Bitcoin futures basis on every live dated contract at Binance, Bybit, OKX and Deribit, read 2026-08-19 08:38 UTC, plotted against days to expiry on a log scale. The 21 August 2026 expiry two days out shows three venues at -0.17, +5.14 and +6.05 per cent, while the 26 March 2027 expiry seven months out shows three venues at +4.51, +4.53 and +4.58 per cent. The lower panel shows the widest venue-to-venue gap at each expiry in US dollars of mark price, between 6 and 74 dollars across the whole curve

Bitcoin Futures Basis: 6.2 Points Apart at Two Days, 0.07 Apart at Seven Months

An annualised basis is a price gap divided by the time left on the contract. Read at one instant on 2026-08-19, the three venues listing the 2026-08-21 Bitcoin expiry priced it at -0.172%, +5.141% and +6.046% annualised, 6.218 points apart on 21.65 dollars of mark price. The same three sat 0.068 points apart at seven months.

Athenum AnalyticsAthenum Analytics
18 min
Athenum bar chart of Binance USD-M perpetuals pulled 2026-08-18, split into non-crypto and crypto contracts. Non-crypto is 22.87% by contract count at 169 of 739, and on 2026-08-18 it is 16.64% by open interest at $4.16B of $24.98B and 46.07% by trailing 24 hour turnover at $21.84B of $47.41B

Stock Perpetuals Traded $821M on a Closed Saturday. The Median One Moved 0.09%.

Binance's USD-M futures board is no longer only crypto. Counted on 2026-08-18 08:40 UTC, 169 of its 739 live perpetual contracts track something else: 138 US equities, 12 Hong Kong names, 8 Korean ones, 8 commodities, 1 mainland Chinese name and 2 pre-IPO companies.

Athenum AnalyticsAthenum Analytics
26 min
Athenum stacked bar chart of every live crypto perpetual on four venues on 2026-08-16, split by funding interval. Binance shows 433 symbols on a 4 hour interval, 136 on 8 hours and 1 on 1 hour, 570 in total. Bybit shows 409 on 4 hours, 371 on 8 hours and 1 on 1 hour, 781 in total. Bitget shows 378 on 4 hours, 375 on 8 hours and 1 on 1 hour, 754 in total. OKX shows 199 on 4 hours and 232 on 8 hours, 431 in total

Funding Intervals Are Per Symbol: 1,422 of 2,536 Crypto Perps Are Off the 8 Hour Clock

The funding interval is how often a perpetual charges funding, and most guides, screeners and back of the envelope calculations treat it as a property of the exchange: 8 hours, three settlements a day, multiply by 1,095 for an annual rate. We counted every live crypto perpetual on the main linear board of four venues on 2026-08-16 08:48 UTC. Of 2,536 contracts, 1,422 settle on something other than

Athenum AnalyticsAthenum Analytics
18 min
Athenum line chart of the Coinbase premium over 720 hourly closes from 15 July to 14 August 2026, with a dashed red line at zero. The gold line, labelled as published, runs entirely below zero in a band between about minus 3 and minus 17 basis points with a median of minus 9.12. The blue line, labelled after pricing USDT at its own market price, oscillates tightly around zero between about minus 3.3 and plus 4.1 with a median of plus 0.16

Coinbase Premium or Tether Discount? 720 Hours, One Answer

The Coinbase premium compares Bitcoin priced in US dollars on Coinbase with Bitcoin priced in USDT on Binance, and traders read it as US demand. Over the 720 hourly closes from 2026-07-15 08:00 UTC to 2026-08-14 07:00 UTC it was negative in every single hour, with a median of minus 9.12 basis points, which is 57.31 US dollars at the 62,848.68 dollar close that ended the window. Over the same 720 hours USDT never clos

Athenum AnalyticsAthenum Analytics
17 min
Athenum chart plotting mark price minus index price in basis points for the Bitcoin perpetual on Binance, OKX, Bybit and Bitget across 599 hourly closes from 19 July to 13 August 2026, with a dashed red line at zero: all four lines run in a band between about minus 1 and minus 7.5 basis points for the entire window and none of them touches the zero line at any point

Bitcoin Perpetual Discount to Spot: 599 Hours, and Longs Still Paid

A leveraged position is not closed out at the price on the spot chart, and on Bitcoin perpetuals that difference had one sign for twenty-five days. Across the 599 hourly closes to 2026-08-13 07:00 UTC, the mark price sat below the exchange's own spot index on Binance, OKX, Bybit and Bitget in every hour, 2,396 venue readings without an exception, and funding still ran positive. Here is the measurement, the published mechanism behind it, and what it changes about a liquidation price.

Athenum AnalyticsAthenum Analytics
22 min
Athenum chart comparing the ten long/short readings published for Bitcoin perpetuals at 2026-08-12 07:00 UTC as horizontal bars against a dashed line at 1.0: Bitget all accounts 1.8677, Binance top accounts 1.8385, OKX all accounts 1.7600, Binance all accounts 1.7533, Binance top traders by position size 1.6585, Bybit all accounts 1.4594, OKX top accounts 1.2671, Binance taker buy versus sell volume 0.9347, OKX top traders by position size 0.9256, and OKX taker buy versus sell volume 0.8847, with the bottom three bars ending left of the 1.0 line

Bitcoin Long Short Ratio: Ten Published Numbers, One Market

The Bitcoin long/short ratio is not one number. For the hour ending 2026-08-12 07:00 UTC, Binance, OKX, Bybit and Bitget published ten readings for the same perpetual market, from 0.8847 to 1.8677, and three of them sat below the 1.0 that is supposed to separate a long-leaning market from a short-leaning one. This is what actually separates those numbers, and what the one reading that is a price rather than a headcount does and does not settle.

Athenum AnalyticsAthenum Analytics
15 min
Athenum chart ranking the share of settlements at which each exchange paid a negative funding rate on its Bitcoin perpetual, across the same 128 shared eight hour settlements from 2026-06-28 to 2026-08-10: Binance 1 of 128 or 0.8 percent, OKX 10 of 128 or 7.8 percent, Bybit 20 of 128 or 15.6 percent, and Bitget 26 of 128 or 20.3 percent, each bar carrying an exact 95 percent binomial interval drawn as a whisker, 0.0 to 4.3 percent for Binance, 3.8 to 13.9 for OKX, 9.8 to 23.1 for Bybit and 13.7 to 28.3 for Bitget, so the overlap between the middle two is visible

Negative Funding Rate on Bitcoin: One Exchange Printed It Once, Another 26 Times

A negative funding rate is the most quoted sentiment signal in crypto derivatives, and it is almost always quoted from one exchange as though it described the whole market. How often you see one depends enormously on which exchange you happen to read.

Athenum AnalyticsAthenum Analytics
18 min
Athenum chart showing the cumulative share of Bitcoin perpetual liquidation notional against the share of hours, ranked busiest first, over 999 completed hourly readings to 2026-08-09: the busiest 1% of hours carry 17.5% of the notional, the busiest 5% carry 47.6% and the busiest 10% carry 65.9%, far above the straight diagonal an even distribution would trace, with a lower panel histogram of the Gini coefficient measured inside each of 976 rolling 24 hour windows showing a 10th percentile of 0.64, a median of 0.76 and a 90th percentile of 0.85

Bitcoin Liquidations by the Hour: Half of Six Weeks Landed in 56 Hours

Bitcoin liquidations do not arrive at a steady rate. Over 999 completed hourly readings to 2026-08-09, half of all the notional landed in 56 hours and the busiest 1% of hours carried 17.5%. Almost every hour is one way, while the whole panel pooled together looks balanced.

Athenum AnalyticsAthenum Analytics
18 min
Athenum chart of how often a Bitcoin perpetual funding read taken early had the opposite sign to the rate that settled, over 496 venue-settlements to 2026-08-08: 13 of 496 wrong for a read in the final hour, 38 of 496 at two hours, 59 at three, 70 at four, 75 at five, 74 at six and 82 at seven, against a dashed baseline of 79 of 496 for simply assuming the rate stays where it last settled, with a lower panel showing that only 25 percent of the final average's weight has accrued at the start of the four hour window

Bitcoin Funding Rates Only Beat the Last Settlement in the Final Three Hours

The funding rate a venue shows you before a settlement is a running average, not the rate it will charge. Over 496 Bitcoin perpetual venue-settlements to 2026-08-08, a read taken four hours out was no better than assuming the rate stays where it last settled. The screen only starts to separate inside three hours.

Athenum AnalyticsAthenum Analytics
22 min
Athenum chart of Bitcoin perpetual turnover by venue over 168 hourly readings to 2026-08-06: median 2.35 times per day for OKX, 1.24 for Binance, 0.94 for Bybit, 0.93 for Bitget and 0.75 for Hyperliquid, each drawn with its interquartile band and full range, with Deribit shown as a single reading at 0.33

Bitcoin Perp Turnover Runs Three Times Faster on OKX Than on Hyperliquid

Turnover is the notional a venue traded in a day divided by the open interest still on its book. Run it on the same six Bitcoin perpetuals and the answers span a factor of seven, the two venues in the middle turn out not to be separable at all, and one venue's own open interest field doubles its own result.

Athenum AnalyticsAthenum Analytics
15 min