Bitget Pre-IPO Perps: Funding Base Rate Goes From 0% to 0.005% on 20 October. What It Costs on OpenAI, Anthropic and the Other Six Contracts

What Bitget announced

The notice, titled "Bitget announcement on adjusting the APR used to calculate funding rates for Pre-IPO TradFi perpetual futures", appeared on 19 October 2026. It says the adjustment is meant to "optimize the funding rate pricing mechanism" and "more accurately reflect position holding costs". The scope is every Pre-IPO TradFi perpetual on the platform, and Bitget names eight: OPENAIUSDT, ANTHROPICUSDT, POLYMARKETUSDT, MOONSHOTUSDT, JIOUSDT, OURAUSDT, H100USDT and B200USDT.

The notice changes one parameter: the annualized benchmark interest rate in the funding formula moves from 0% to 0.005%. The effective time is 17:00 UTC+8 on 20 October 2026, which is 09:00 UTC, "subject to the actual system implementation time". Bitget also warns that the change "may affect the funding fees you pay or receive", asks users to manage leverage and monitor funding rates, and says the actual rate is whatever the futures page shows in real time.

The notice does not say which side of a trade pays the base-rate component, and we were not able to read Bitget's funding-rate formula page, so we do not state who pays it. The size of the number is what we can work out.

What a pre-IPO perpetual is

A pre-IPO perp is a USDT-settled futures contract with no expiry that tracks the value of a company, or a theme, that is not yet listed on a stock exchange. You never receive shares. You hold a position whose profit or loss follows the contract price, and the exchange keeps it near an index with a funding payment between longs and shorts.

Bitget's own listing for JIOUSDT, published on 14 October 2026, shows the template: USDT settlement, maximum leverage of 20x, 24/7 trading and funding settled every eight hours. It also gives an estimated share count of 9.21 billion "for reference only". The eight contracts in this notice are not all companies: H100 and B200 are named after Nvidia GPU models, and POLYMARKET is a prediction-market operator, so the underlying differs a lot from contract to contract. The JIO page is the only listing we read, so do not assume the other seven share every parameter; check each contract page.

Other venues list similar products. According to their announcement headlines, Binance Futures launched MOONSHOTUSDT on 22 September and OURAUSDT on 23 September, KuCoin listed both as pre-market contracts on 23 September, and OKX listed OURAUSD X-Perps on 7 October.

The arithmetic: what 0.005% a year costs

Funding in perpetual contracts is normally quoted per settlement interval, and Bitget settles these every eight hours (per the JIO listing), which is 1,095 intervals a year. We use that to convert the annual figure; the conversion is our arithmetic and does not come from Bitget's notice.

Compare that with the fee schedule. Bitget's standard USDT-futures taker fee, as listed on our Bitget profile, is 0.06%, which is 6 USDT on a 10,000 USDT order, and the maker fee is 0.02%, or 2 USDT. Opening and closing one 10,000 USDT position with market orders costs about 12 USDT in fees. The year-long base-rate effect is about 0.50 USDT. Even on a 100,000 USDT position, a year of base rate is about 5 USDT, less than the 6 USDT taker fee on a single 10,000 USDT order.

What actually drives funding on these contracts

The base rate is the floor of the formula. The premium of the contract price over its index is the moving part, and on thinly traded pre-IPO markets it can be much larger.

At 10:50 UTC on 19 October, we read Bitget's public futures tickers for all eight contracts. Every one showed a funding rate of 0, so on that reading nobody was paying anybody:

The first two contracts carry nearly all the volume. The last three or four trade a few thousand to a couple of hundred thousand USDT a day, which is thin enough that a single order can move the price. In that kind of book, a premium spike, not a base rate of 0.005%, is what turns a funding payment from pennies into a real cost. The spread between the two groups is the practical lesson of this notice: pick the contract by liquidity first.

How to act on this

If you hold any of the eight contracts, you do not need to close anything before 17:00 on 20 October because of this change. What is worth doing is checking the live funding rate and the countdown on each contract page, using a lower leverage than the 20x ceiling, and watching how far the contract trades from its index before you add size. Pre-IPO contracts have no reference listing price yet, and we could not verify how Bitget builds the index for them.

To trade them, open the contracts on Bitget; signing up with code nexu888 puts a fee rebate on your trading. Our funding rates board shows live funding for the large perp markets so you can compare, and the tokenized stocks hub explains the difference between contracts like these and tokens that are backed by real shares.

Quick answers

When does the change take effect? At 17:00 UTC+8 on 20 October 2026, subject to the actual system implementation time.

Which contracts does it cover? All Pre-IPO TradFi perps on Bitget: OPENAIUSDT, ANTHROPICUSDT, POLYMARKETUSDT, MOONSHOTUSDT, JIOUSDT, OURAUSDT, H100USDT and B200USDT.

How much will it cost me? About 0.50 USDT a year per 10,000 USDT of position, by our arithmetic from the annualized 0.005%.

Do I need to close my position? No. The change is small and the notice does not require any action.

Does a pre-IPO perp give me shares? No. It is a USDT-settled contract whose price follows an index; you hold no stock.

What could we not verify? Which side pays the base rate, how Bitget builds the index for these contracts, and the parameters of the seven contracts other than JIOUSDT.