New Fire Group Chief Economist Fu Peng: Bitcoin perpetual contracts essentially involve large investors holding long-term positions to collect rent, while retail investors use leverage to go long and pay fees.

Mars Finance news: Fu Peng, the newly appointed Chief Economist of New Fire Group, posted on Twitter that the underlying business model of Bitcoin perpetual contracts is essentially the same as the “deferred fee/overnight fee” in traditional finance—such as gold and industrial commodity spot trading exchanges. Fu Peng noted that, in the past, gold exchanges conducted daily forced liquidation settlements, with long and short parties paying each other deferred fees. When retail investors held large amounts of leveraged long positions, the deferred fee became the most stable and well-hidden source of platform income. Today, Bitcoin spot platforms mainly rely on perpetual contracts, with both longs and shorts settling funding rates every 8 hours. When longs have the advantage, retail investors holding long-term positions continuously pay funding rates to shorts. Although the platform does not directly charge this fee, it significantly boosts trading activity, open interest, and liquidity, indirectly generating substantial trading-fee income and forming stable, large-scale cash flow. Essentially, it is a business model in which large investors/institutions “collect rent” through long-term holdings, retail leverage longs by paying for them, and platforms indirectly skim off fees.