What is Binance?
Binance is the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao and headquartered in Dubai. The platform serves more than 260 million registered users across 180+ countries and processes the highest perpetual futures volumes of any centralized exchange, including deep order books on major pairs like BTCUSDT and ETHUSDT.
Richard Teng took over as CEO in November 2023 and has steered the company toward a compliance-first posture following its settlement with US authorities. Beyond perpetuals, Binance operates spot markets with 350+ listed assets, options, margin trading, an NFT marketplace, and yield products through Binance Earn.
For perpetual traders, liquidity is the main draw. Tight spreads and high open interest reduce slippage on large orders, and the exchange's funding rates frequently serve as the market benchmark that other venues track.
Binance Perpetual Futures Fees
Binance Futures charges regular users a 0.02% maker fee and 0.05% taker fee on USDⓈ-margined perpetual contracts, per the official fee schedule. COIN-margined contracts carry the same base rates. Binance charges no fee for holding leverage, so costs come from order execution and funding payments.
Fees fall as trading volume rises through Binance's nine VIP tiers. At VIP 9, which requires over $25 billion in 30-day futures volume and a substantial BNB balance, maker fees drop to zero and taker fees to 0.017%. Traders who pay fees in BNB receive an additional 10% discount on USDⓈ-margined contracts, though the discount does not apply to COIN-margined pairs.
An order counts as maker or taker depending on whether it adds or removes liquidity from the book, covered in our guide to maker vs taker fees in crypto. For how Binance's rates stack up against its closest competitor, see the full Bybit vs Binance perpetual futures fee comparison. New accounts registered with a Binance referral code receive an ongoing discount on both spot and futures fees.
How Binance Funding Rates Work
Funding rates are periodic payments exchanged between long and short position holders that keep Binance perpetual contract prices anchored to the underlying spot index. Most Binance pairs settle funding every 8 hours, though some contracts use 4-hour or shorter intervals during volatile conditions.
A positive funding rate means longs pay shorts, which typically signals perpetual prices trading above spot and bullish positioning. Negative funding means shorts pay longs. Binance takes no cut of funding payments, which transfer directly between traders. Our explainer on positive vs negative crypto funding fees breaks down how to read these signals, and you can track live rates for every Binance pair against other exchanges on the CoinPerps funding rates dashboard.
Binance Perpetual Contract Types & Leverage
Binance Futures offers two contract families. USDⓈ-margined perpetuals are settled and collateralized in stablecoins (USDT or USDC), making profit and loss simple to calculate in dollar terms. COIN-margined perpetuals use the underlying cryptocurrency as collateral, which suits miners and long-term holders who want to hedge or trade without converting to stablecoins.
Leverage runs up to 125x on BTCUSDT, with lower caps on less liquid altcoin pairs. Traders can choose between cross margin, where the entire futures wallet balance backs open positions, and isolated margin, which limits risk to the collateral assigned to a single position. Higher leverage brings liquidation prices closer to entry, and forced liquidations on Binance are among the largest recorded across the market, visible in real time on the CoinPerps liquidations tracker. Traders with large positions should also understand how auto-deleveraging works, since ADL can close profitable positions when the insurance fund cannot absorb counterparty losses.
Binance TradFi Perpetual Contracts
Binance extended its perpetuals engine beyond crypto in January this year with the launch of TradFi Perpetual Contracts, opening with USDT-settled gold (XAUUSDT) and silver (XAGUSDT) perpetuals offered through Nest Exchange Limited, a Binance entity regulated by Abu Dhabi Global Market's Financial Services Regulatory Authority.
The category has since expanded into energy contracts tracking WTI, Brent, and natural gas, plus equity perpetuals covering listed stocks and pre-market exposure to companies before they list. The appeal mirrors crypto perps themselves. Contracts never expire, trade around the clock while traditional markets close overnight and on weekends, and settle in stablecoins.
The segment is growing faster than any other corner of the perps market, and availability varies by region since these products run through Binance's regulated entities. Our guide to the best TradFi perpetual exchanges compares how each venue's offering stacks up.
Binance Licenses & Regulation
Binance holds licenses and registrations in a broad set of jurisdictions, including VARA in Dubai (where it is headquartered), FSRA in Abu Dhabi, AFSA in Kazakhstan, AUSTRAC in Australia, FIU-IND in India, Bappebti in Indonesia, JFSA in Japan, and regulators across Latin America and Africa. The full list is published on Binance's licensing page.
Its record also includes major enforcement action. In November 2023, Binance agreed to a $4.3 billion settlement with the US Department of Justice, FinCEN, and OFAC over anti-money laundering and sanctions violations. Founder Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty and stepped down as CEO. The exchange has operated under court-appointed compliance monitorship since.
In Europe, Binance withdrew its MiCA license application with Greece's securities regulator in June 2026, days before the EU's 1 July authorization deadline, and has restricted services for EU users while it pursues authorization through another member state. Withdrawals for existing EU customers remain open. The complete picture of where the exchange can and cannot operate is maintained in our Binance Futures restricted countries list.
Where is Binance Available?
Binance.com serves users in over 160 countries and supports more than 40 interface languages, but derivatives access is narrower than spot access in many regions. The global platform does not serve the United States, where residents are limited to Binance.US, a separate entity that does not offer perpetual futures. American traders can read our full guide on whether you can use Binance Futures in the USA.
Sanctioned jurisdictions including North Korea, Iran, and Syria are blocked, Canada lost access after Binance's 2023 market exit, and EU availability is restricted pending MiCA authorization. UK users face derivatives limitations under FCA rules. Access rules change as licensing progresses, so check current status before funding an account.
Is Binance Safe?
Binance has reimbursed customers in full after past security breaches and layers several protections over accounts and custody. The majority of customer assets sit in offline cold storage, accounts support hardware-key and app-based two-factor authentication, and withdrawal whitelisting plus real-time monitoring guard against account takeovers.
The Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) is an emergency insurance reserve created in 2018 and funded from trading fees. SAFU covered the full 7,000 BTC loss from the exchange's 2019 hack. In February this year Binance converted the reserve into 15,000 BTC worth roughly $1 billion, held in a publicly viewable wallet, and pledged to top the fund back up if its value falls below $800 million. Alongside SAFU sits Proof of Reserves, which uses Merkle tree verification and zk-SNARK cryptography so any user can independently confirm their assets are backed at a minimum 1:1 ratio. Recent snapshots show over $160 billion in fully backed customer assets.
No centralized exchange removes counterparty risk, and Binance's enforcement history shows regulatory risk persists even when custody is well run. Withdrawing coins you are not actively trading remains the safest default.
How Does Binance Compare to Other Perpetual Exchanges?
Binance leads the perpetual futures market on raw volume and open interest, but the gap has narrowed. Bybit competes closely on derivatives depth and product range, OKX runs a comparable fee schedule plus stronger unified account features, and Hyperliquid has pulled significant volume on-chain at fees that undercut centralized venues at certain tiers.
Side-by-side breakdowns of volume, fees, funding, and supported pairs are available in our comparisons of Binance vs Bybit and Binance vs OKX, while the Hyperliquid vs Binance fee comparison covers how the largest centralized exchange measures up against the largest perp DEX. For a market-wide view of how open interest is distributed across venues, the CoinPerps open interest dashboard tracks every major exchange in real time.