Futures trading: how to trade crypto perpetual futures

What futures trading actually is

A futures contract is an agreement whose value tracks the price of an underlying asset. Crypto exchanges mostly list perpetual futures: contracts with no expiry date, kept anchored to the spot price by a funding payment exchanged between longs and shorts.

You post collateral (margin) in USDT and open a position sized as a multiple of that collateral. Profit and loss settle in USDT, so you never custody the underlying coin and never need to move between spot markets to change direction.

Long and short in practice

Going long means you profit when the mark price rises. Going short means you profit when it falls — the reason futures traders can work in a falling market while spot holders can only wait.

Both directions cost the same to open on Tonly: a taker or maker fee on notional volume, plus funding while the position stays open. Direction is a view on price, not a different product.

Leverage, margin and liquidation

Leverage multiplies exposure relative to margin. With 100 USDT at 10x you control 1,000 USDT of notional: a 1% price move is roughly 10% of your margin, in either direction.

Every position carries a maintenance margin requirement. When losses eat into margin down to that level, the position is force-closed at its liquidation price. Lower leverage, added margin and a stop-loss placed before the liquidation level are the three ways to survive volatility.

Isolated margin risks only the collateral attached to one position. Cross margin lets the whole balance absorb drawdown, which delays liquidation but exposes the account.

The real costs of a futures position

Trading fee: charged on notional volume when you open and when you close. At high leverage the fee scales with exposure, not with your margin, which is what surprises new traders.

Funding rate: settled every 8 hours. When longs dominate the book, longs pay shorts; when shorts dominate, it inverts. Held for days, funding can exceed the trading fee.

Slippage: the gap between expected and executed price on market orders in thin books. Limit orders remove it at the cost of possibly not filling.

A disciplined workflow

Decide the invalidation level before entry, size the position so that hitting it costs a fixed small share of the account, then place the stop-loss with the order rather than after it.

Keep leverage modest and let position size do the work. Two identical trades — one at 5x with more margin, one at 50x with less — can carry the same exposure while only one survives an ordinary wick.

Log every trade with entry, exit, fee and funding. Tonly stores that history per position so the review is a read, not a reconstruction.

Trading futures on Tonly

Deposit USDT on TON through TON Connect, or top up with Telegram Stars, and the balance becomes tradable margin. There is no KYC step and no custody of your spot wallet.

Every market shows its chart, order book depth, funding, position list and order history in one screen, on mobile inside Telegram and on desktop in an exchange-style layout.

Start with the smallest size the market allows until the mechanics — margin mode, order type, TP/SL, reduce-only — feel routine.