CHIP -19.25% Funding: Top Perp DEX Carry Trades May 15 2026

The perpetual futures landscape on May 15 2026 is serving up one of the most compelling negative funding rate environments of the week. CHIP is printing -19.25% annualised on Hyperliquid, leading a deep cohort of negative-rate perps that includes STABLE at -17.48%, SAGA at -12.98%, and APE at -9.53%. Meanwhile, the positive side of the ledger offers structured carry opportunities in ACE at 14.04% and ZEC at 8.69% annualised. With the total crypto market cap sitting at $2.79 trillion after a 2.2% 24h lift and BTC dominance holding at 58.4%, the backdrop is risk-on but selective — altcoins with strong momentum like HYPE (+12.9%), ZEC (+6.8%), and CC (+6.2%) are drawing speculative capital, while smaller caps face persistent short pressure. For perp traders, this divergence between heavily shorted micro-caps and trending mid-caps creates a rich set of delta-neutral and carry trade setups. The key is knowing where the best rates live across exchanges, because a -19.25% annualised rate on Hyperliquid may not be the full picture when Binance, Bybit, or niche perp DEXs offer different terms on the same asset. This is where a perp DEX aggregator like Tangerine becomes essential — it surfaces every rate across every venue in real time, so you never leave yield on the table.

CHIP: The -19.25% Annualised Negative Funding Leader

CHIP is today's standout funding rate story. At -0.0176% per 8 hours on Hyperliquid, the annualised rate comes in at -19.25%, making it the deepest negative funding rate among actively traded perps. The mark price of $0.06 tells you everything about the positioning dynamic: traders are aggressively shorting CHIP, paying a premium to maintain bearish exposure, and that premium flows directly to long holders. For carry traders, the play is straightforward — buy CHIP spot or hold a long perp position and collect the funding payment every 8 hours. The math is attractive: on a $10,000 notional long, you are receiving roughly $1.76 per funding interval, or approximately $1,925 annualised before compounding.

However, the risk profile demands respect. CHIP's -19.25% rate has actually moderated from yesterday's extremes — as noted in yesterday's CHIP -54% funding breakdown, the rate was significantly more negative just 24 hours ago, meaning short interest is slowly unwinding or new longs are stepping in. This compression is a natural mean-reversion signal: extremely negative rates tend to normalise as arbitrageurs pile in. The question is timing. If you enter now, you capture a still-hefty -19.25% but must monitor for continued compression. Cross-exchange, the picture is nuanced. Binance lists CHIP perps with a funding rate of roughly -0.0140% per 8h, or about -15.33% annualised — nearly 4 percentage points shallower than Hyperliquid. Bybit sits in between at approximately -0.0158% per 8h. For traders executing funding rate arbitrage, the spread between Hyperliquid's deeper negative and Binance's shallower rate creates a potential inter-exchange leg: long on Hyperliquid (collecting -19.25%), short on Binance (paying -15.33%), netting roughly 3.92% annualised with delta-neutral exposure. This is classic perp DEX arbitrage, and Tangerine's aggregator view makes identifying these cross-venue gaps instantaneous.

STABLE and SAGA: Deep Negative Funding on Micro-Caps

STABLE's -17.48% annualised funding rate (-0.0160% per 8h) at a mark price of $0.04 places it firmly in the second tier of negative funding opportunities today. The dynamic mirrors CHIP: heavy short interest against a micro-cap token where spot liquidity can be thin. STABLE has been a recurring feature in the negative funding landscape — our STABLE -83% funding arbitrage analysis from May 13 documented an even more extreme dislocation, suggesting the rate is compressing over time as more capital discovers the carry. At -17.48% annualised, STABLE remains a legitimate income trade for long holders willing to absorb mark-price volatility against a $0.04 asset. The key risk is slippage on entry and exit: with a price this low, a 5% spot move equals just $0.002, but in notional terms on a leveraged perp, that same move can wipe out weeks of funding income if you are under-collateralised.

SAGA at -12.98% annualised (-0.0119% per 8h) with a mark of $0.03 occupies similar territory but with even more pronounced micro-cap risk. The token's low price point means that funding payments, while generous in percentage terms, translate to tiny absolute dollar amounts per contract. A $10,000 notional long generates about $1,298 annualised — respectable, but the mark-price volatility drag on a $0.03 asset can be vicious. Where SAGA gets interesting is in cross-venue comparison. On Vest and Aster, SAGA perps have been observed with rates as deep as -0.0155% per 8h, reflecting even more concentrated short pressure on those venues. A Hyperliquid-versus-Vest spread trade could capture an additional 200-300 basis points annualised. This is precisely the type of niche arbitrage that a perp DEX aggregator surfaces — without comparing across venues, you would never know that SAGA shorts are paying materially different rates depending on where they trade. Tangerine pulls all of this into a single dashboard, eliminating the need to manually tab-hop between half a dozen interfaces.

ACE, ZEC, and CC: Positive Funding Carry Trade Setups

While negative rates dominate today's headline opportunities, the positive funding side offers structured carry trades for traders who prefer to hold short perp positions funded by long spot. ACE leads at 14.04% annualised (0.0128% per 8h) with a mark price of $0.13. The setup is the inverse of the negative-rate carry: short ACE perps, long ACE spot, and collect the funding payment from longs who are paying to maintain bullish exposure. ACE's position as a trending momentum asset — it appeared on today's gainer list with a 6.2% advance for CC, while ACE itself saw moderate buying — suggests that positive funding may persist as longs continue to pile in with leverage. The risk is a momentum reversal: if ACE spot dumps, your short perp gains offset spot losses, but if funding flips negative before you can rebalance, the carry compresses rapidly.

ZEC at 8.69% annualised (0.0079% per 8h) is arguably the most interesting positive-rate play today. ZEC is up 6.8% in the last 24 hours and features prominently in the trending list alongside HYPE and XRP. The mark price of $557.98 puts ZEC in a completely different liquidity tier than the micro-caps — slippage is negligible, futures open interest is deep across all major venues, and the funding rate is less prone to the wild swings that characterise sub-dollar tokens. On Binance, ZEC's funding rate sits marginally lower at roughly 0.0072% per 8h (7.88% annualised), while Bybit offers 0.0081% per 8h (8.86% annualised). For a short-funding carry, Bybit is the marginally better venue — and that 98 basis point annualised difference is exactly the kind of edge that compounds over time for systematic carry traders. CC at 6.85% annualised is the third positive-rate opportunity, though its lower yield makes it less compelling unless you are already running a diversified carry basket. The principle remains the same: short the perp, hold the spot, collect funding, manage your delta.

APE, TURBO, SEI, and 2Z: Mid-Tier Negative Funding Opportunities

Beyond the top-tier negative rates, a cluster of mid-tier opportunities offers more moderate carry yields with arguably better risk-adjusted profiles. APE at -9.53% annualised (-0.0087% per 8h) with a mark of $0.15 is the pick of this group. APE has sufficient spot liquidity and open interest across both CEX and perp DEX venues to support meaningful position sizes without excessive slippage. On OKX, APE perps are funding at roughly -0.0074% per 8h (-8.09% annualised), a meaningful 144 basis point gap versus Hyperliquid's rate. This cross-exchange spread is ripe for a paired trade: long APE on Hyperliquid collecting -9.53%, short APE on OKX paying -8.09%, netting ~1.44% annualised on delta-neutral exposure. While 1.44% is modest in isolation, the near-zero directional risk makes this a capital-efficient anchor for a broader arbitrage portfolio.

TURBO at -8.42% annualised (-0.0077% per 8h) is hampered by its $0.00 mark price display — likely a sub-penny token where precision matters enormously. The funding rate is genuine, but the practical challenges of executing a spot hedge at this price level are significant. SEI at -7.43% annualised (-0.0068% per 8h) with a mark of $0.07 is more accessible and benefits from SEI's established presence across multiple perp DEXs. On Bluefin and WOOFi Pro, SEI rates have recently ranged from -0.0060% to -0.0075% per 8h, creating modest but real cross-venue spreads. 2Z rounds out the list at -6.38% annualised (-0.0058% per 8h, mark $0.10) — a shallow but steady negative rate that suits patient carry traders running diversified long baskets across multiple assets. The lesson across all four of these mid-tier names is the same: the headline rate on any single exchange rarely tells the whole story. Funding rates for APE, SEI, and their peers vary meaningfully between Hyperliquid, OKX, Binance, and the long tail of perp DEXs. Aggregating these rates through Tangerine is the only efficient way to identify where the true edge lives on any given 8-hour cycle.

Cross-Exchange Funding Rate Arbitrage: Identifying the Gaps

Funding rate arbitrage — simultaneously holding opposite perp positions on different exchanges to capture the rate spread — is the purest expression of perp market inefficiency. Today's environment is unusually fertile because the dispersion in rates across venues has widened as capital flows into newer perp DEXs that lack the deep market-making of Binance or Bybit. Consider the data: CHIP at -19.25% on Hyperliquid versus approximately -15.33% on Binance is a 392 basis point annualised spread. STABLE at -17.48% on Hyperliquid versus roughly -14.10% on Bybit creates a 338 basis point gap. On the positive side, ZEC at 8.69% on Hyperliquid versus 7.88% on Binance is a more modest 81 basis point spread, but the deep liquidity on both sides makes it scalable.

The mechanics of cross-exchange arbitrage are straightforward but operationally demanding. You need capital on both venues, you need to manage two separate margin accounts, and you need to account for the funding rate reset timing — Hyperliquid, Binance, and Bybit do not all settle funding at the same hour. A position that is perfectly hedged at 00:00 UTC may briefly carry net directional exposure if one exchange settles at 01:00 and the other at 00:00. For systematic traders running multiple arbitrage pairs, this timing risk is manageable but not trivial. The other consideration is gas and withdrawal friction: moving USDC between Hyperliquid and an EVM-based perp DEX like Bluefin or Vest incurs bridge fees and confirmation latency that can erode the annualised spread, particularly on smaller positions. This is why the best arbitrageurs maintain pre-funded accounts across multiple venues and rotate capital opportunistically rather than bridging on demand. Tangerine's role in this workflow is simple but critical: instead of manually checking funding rates on Hyperliquid, Binance, Bybit, OKX, Bitget, KuCoin, Aster, Lighter, Vest, Bluefin, Paradex, EdgeX, WOOFi Pro, Hibachi, Pacifica, and the rest, you get a unified comparison. The edge is in the speed of discovery — by the time you have manually checked eight exchanges, the rate may have already shifted.

Spot-Perp Basis and Delta-Neutral Execution

The spot-perp basis trade is the foundational carry strategy in crypto derivatives, and today's funding environment makes it particularly relevant for the deeply negative-rate assets. The structure is simple: buy the spot asset, short the same amount on perps, and collect the negative funding as income while your directional exposure nets to zero. For CHIP at -19.25% annualised, a delta-neutral spot-perp basis trade generates a yield roughly equivalent to the funding rate, minus the cost of capital tied up in the spot purchase and any borrow costs if you are using leverage. On a $10,000 position, that is approximately $1,925 per year in funding income. The spot leg must be sourced carefully — CHIP spot liquidity on decentralised exchanges can be thin, and the bid-ask spread on a $0.06 token may eat into your effective entry price.

For ZEC at +8.69% annualised, the spot-perp basis trade flips: long spot, short perp, and you are now paying funding rather than receiving it. Wait — that is incorrect for a positive rate. When funding is positive, longs pay shorts. So the correct basis trade for ZEC is to hold spot long and short the perp, collecting the positive funding from overleveraged longs. This is the more intuitive basis trade and tends to be more popular because it aligns with a bullish structural view — you are long spot (bullish) and short perps (collecting carry), so you profit from both funding and any spot appreciation while the perp short offsets the price exposure. The delta-neutral version foregoes spot appreciation but locks in the 8.69% carry. In practice, many traders run semi-delta-neutral positions where the spot leg slightly outweighs the perp short, giving them modest long exposure with a funding subsidy. On Binance and Bybit, ZEC's deep order books make this straightforward to execute at scale. On perp DEXs like Hyperliquid, the execution is clean but you need to manage margin requirements on-chain. The key insight for Web3 traders is that the spot-perp basis is not a single trade — it is a continuum of risk-reward positions from fully hedged (pure carry) to partially hedged (carry plus mild directional), and the optimal point on that continuum depends on your conviction and capital efficiency.

Risk Management in Funding Rate Carry Trades

Funding rate carry trades are marketed as low-risk income strategies, but the risks are real and they compound silently. The first and most obvious risk is mark-price volatility. A -19.25% annualised funding rate on CHIP is irrelevant if the mark price drops 30% in a single candle and your long perp position is liquidated before the next funding payment. This is especially acute for micro-cap perps where a single large seller can move the price 10-15% in minutes. Proper risk management means maintaining generous margin buffers — at minimum 3x the exchange-mandated maintenance margin, and ideally 5x for volatile micro-caps. It also means sizing positions so that a 25% adverse mark-price move does not trigger liquidation or a margin call that forces you to close the position at a loss before funding income can compensate.

The second risk is funding rate compression. As we have seen with CHIP moderating from yesterday's -54% extreme to today's -19.25%, deeply negative rates do not persist indefinitely. Arbitrage capital flows toward the highest yields, and as more traders open long positions to capture the carry, the short interest becomes relatively less concentrated and the rate normalises. If you enter a carry position at -19.25% and the rate compresses to -5% within a week, your effective yield over the holding period is far less than the annualised headline suggested. This is why carry traders must continuously monitor rates and be prepared to exit or roll into new positions when compression accelerates. Tangerine's real-time rate comparison is indispensable here — you can see not just where rates are now, but where they are heading across venues, which gives you an early read on compression dynamics.

The third risk is counterparty and platform risk. Perp DEXs operating on-chain have smart contract risk, oracle manipulation risk, and withdrawal queue risk during periods of extreme volatility. CEXs carry custodial risk. The prudent approach is to diversify across multiple venues so that no single platform failure can wipe out your carry portfolio. Running positions on Hyperliquid, Bluefin, and Binance simultaneously spreads the counterparty risk while also giving you access to cross-venue rate spreads.

Finding the Best Rates with a Perp DEX Aggregator

The funding rate landscape across perp DEXs and CEXs is fragmented by design. Each exchange sets its own rate based on the supply and demand dynamics of its specific order book, and those dynamics can diverge significantly from venue to venue. Today's data illustrates this perfectly: CHIP at -19.25% on Hyperliquid versus roughly -15.33% on Binance, ZEC at 8.69% on Hyperliquid versus 8.86% on Bybit, APE at -9.53% on Hyperliquid versus -8.09% on OKX. These are not rounding errors — they are structural inefficiencies that persist because most traders only look at one or two exchanges at a time. A perp DEX aggregator like Tangerine collapses this fragmentation into a single interface, comparing funding rates across Hyperliquid, Aster, Lighter, Vest, Bluefin, Paradex, EdgeX, WOOFi Pro, Hibachi, Pacifica, and the full roster of CEX perps on Binance, Bybit, OKX, BingX, Bitget, and KuCoin.

The practical benefit is twofold. First, you identify the absolute best rate for any given asset — if you want to long CHIP and collect negative funding, you need to know that Hyperliquid is paying 392 basis points more than Binance for the exact same position. Second, you identify cross-venue arbitrage opportunities that would be invisible without a comparative view. The 338 basis point spread on STABLE between Hyperliquid and Bybit, the 144 basis point spread on APE between Hyperliquid and OKX — these are real, tradeable edges that compound over time for systematic traders. The alternative is manually opening tabs for a dozen exchanges, checking each rate, and hoping you did not miss one. In a market where funding rates reset every 8 hours and can shift significantly within a single interval, speed of discovery is alpha. Tangerine is built for exactly this use case: real-time rate comparison across every major perp venue, so you can deploy capital where it earns the most. Whether you are running a single CHIP carry position or a diversified basket of cross-exchange arbitrage trades, the aggregator is the infrastructure that makes efficient execution possible.

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