A perpetual has no expiry, so something else keeps its price near the spot price: funding, a payment between longs and shorts every hour. When you copy a trader who holds for days, you hold through the same funding they do. It is the third cost of a copied trade, after hyperliquid's fee and the builder fee, and the only one that can be negative.
how funding works on hyperliquid
Every hour, hyperliquid computes a funding rate per market from the gap between the perp's price and the spot index. If the perp trades above spot (more demand to be long), longs pay shorts; below spot, shorts pay longs. The payment is rate × position notional, credited or debited on your account each hour, without any order.
Typical rates in calm markets are around 0.001% per hour (about 0.01% a day, about 9% a year). In a crowded trend they can reach 0.01% an hour or more for days, and the protocol caps extreme cases at 4% an hour. Hyperliquid's app shows the current and predicted rate on each market.
why it matters for a copy
The trader you copy has usually already priced funding into their decision: a long in a market paying 0.02% an hour needs to move 0.5% a day just to stand still. Your copy pays the same rate on your notional, so your economics match theirs, with one difference: you pay two extra fee layers on entry and exit, so a trade that is marginal for them is a loss for you.
Funding also compounds with hold time. A scalper holding minutes pays almost none. A swing trader holding a week at 0.005% an hour pays about 0.85% of notional. Multiply by leverage to see it against margin: at 5× that is over 4% of the margin in a week.
reading it on a trader's profile
Hypercopy shows median hold and trades per day. Together with the market's funding, they tell you how much of the trader's gross gain goes to funding:
- median hold in hours, on BTC or ETH: funding is noise;
- median hold in days, on a coin whose funding has been elevated: check the trader's returns are net of it (hyperliquid's PnL is, hypercopy's ROI figures come from it);
- long-only trader in a long-crowded market: they pay funding on every position; a fall in the trend shows up as funding eating the return before price does.
funding can pay you
When the crowd is on the other side, your copied position receives funding. A trader who systematically shorts over-heated perps collects it. It shows on your account as small hourly credits.
what hypercopy does and does not do
Hypercopy does not filter or time trades on funding; it mirrors the trader. Your portfolio PnL on hyperliquid includes funding, so what you see is net. If a trader's style makes funding a large cost, that shows in their ROI, which is what the leaderboard ranks by.
faq
is funding a hypercopy fee?
No. Funding is paid between traders on hyperliquid; hypercopy takes none of it. Hypercopy's only fee is the 0.05% builder fee per perps order (on spot, per sale).
can i avoid funding by copying spot?
Yes: spot has no funding and no leverage, and hypercopy copies spot traders too: 🏆 find spot traders, on the bot's home screen. It is a different strategy, though: a spot copy only buys and sells tokens, it never shorts.
where do i see the funding i paid?
On hyperliquid, your account's funding history lists each hourly payment per position. Your portfolio value in the bot already reflects it.
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