Flipster Learn: guides to perpetual futures, margin and exchange safety
Flipster Learn explains how perpetual futures work through three in-depth guides, on funding rates, liquidation prices and proof of reserves, each written by the Flipster Research Team, reviewed by compliance, dated, and built on the contract data and terms published on this site rather than on generic definitions.
For information only. Not investment advice.
| Guides | 3 in-depth guides, each with a short FAQ |
|---|---|
| Written by | Flipster Research Team |
| Reviewed by | Head of Compliance |
| Sources | Listed at the end of every guide, with the date each was read |
| Contract examples | BTCUSDT.PERP and XAUUSDT.PERP |
| Glossary | 29 terms in six groups |
Flipster Learn is the reference shelf behind the product pages of this site. It is written for two readers: someone about to open a first leveraged position, and someone who already trades and wants to check a cost, a formula or a claim before relying on it.
Flipster’s own guide defines the product in one line: “Perpetual swap contracts are cryptocurrency futures contracts without an expiry date.” (flipster.io/support/guide/perpetual-swaps, read 2026-10-11). Two mechanics follow from that sentence. With no expiry, nothing pulls the contract price back to the index on a settlement date, so a funding payment does that job. And because the position is leveraged, there is a price at which the venue closes it.
A perpetual futures guide earns its place only if it tells you what a position costs to hold and where it ends, so the first two guides cover exactly those two points. The third answers a different question: how to check what an exchange says about the assets it holds for you.
None of the guides contains a trade idea, a price forecast or a signal. They explain the rules that sit behind crypto perpetual futures on Flipster, TradFi perpetuals on gold, stocks and ETFs and the product described in crypto copy trading explained.
What is a funding rate? Formula, examples and costs
Afterwards you can read the sign of a rate, say which side pays, and work out what a position costs at each funding time.Liquidation price: formula and how to avoid liquidation
Afterwards you can estimate where an isolated position would be closed, and see how leverage and maintenance margin move that level.What is proof of reserves in crypto and how to verify it
Afterwards you can check that your own balance is inside a published snapshot, and say what a reserve ratio does and does not show.
Each guide opens with the answer in one paragraph and then shows the working: the formula or method, the published figures with the date they were read, and examples you can redo by hand.
Each one closes with its sources, a short FAQ and links to the other two. Where a figure could not be confirmed at its source, the text says so.
Short answers to single questions are in the frequently asked questions.
Two kinds of cost attach to a perpetual position, and they go to different places. Trading fees go to the venue: a maker or taker fee on each fill. Funding does not. It is a transfer between traders, and Flipster’s guide says traders “exchange funding fees with each other with no additional costs levied by the platform”.
If the funding fee is positive, longs pay shorts; if it is negative, shorts pay longs. The same guide says payments occur at fixed intervals that may vary by contract, for example every 4 or 8 hours, and apply only to positions held at the funding timestamp.
- the funding rate formula, term by term
- working out a funding payment by hand
- Flipster fee schedule, with maker and taker rates for all 12 tiers
- what a perpetual futures trade costs at the entry tier
- fees and funding on gold and stock perpetuals
- Glossary: funding cap and base interest rate
Margin is the collateral behind a leveraged position, and leverage is the ratio between the position and that collateral. The more leverage you take, the closer the liquidation price sits to your entry price.
Liquidation is triggered by the mark price, not by the last traded price, and under Flipster’s Derivatives Trading Terms a position is closed without prior notice. Read the liquidation guide before you choose a position size, not after.
- the liquidation price formula for an isolated position
- ways to stay clear of liquidation
- margin modes and leverage on crypto perpetuals
- margin and liquidation on TradFi perpetuals
- liquidation risk on copied positions
- Glossary: initial margin, maintenance margin and auto-deleveraging
- risk disclosure for leveraged products
A licence, a reserve proof and a bug bounty answer three different questions, and none of them answers the other two.
A licence says which company a regulator supervises, and for which activity: Flipster FZE is licensed by the Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA) for Exchange Services under VASP Licence VL/26/07/002, and that licence is not stated to cover perpetual futures. A proof of reserves says whether the customer balances in a snapshot were covered by assets on that date; it is not an audit. A bug bounty says that outside researchers are invited to report vulnerabilities; it says nothing about solvency or supervision.
Read all three, and note the date on each.
The Flipster Research Team drafts each guide from published documents: Flipster’s contract pages, guides and terms, regulator registers and rulebooks, and named outside sources. The Head of Compliance reviews every regulatory and risk claim before publication.
Every guide lists its sources at the end with the date each was read, shows its publication and update dates, and records any correction in a dated note on the page. The rules are set out in the editorial policy.
For information only. Not investment advice.
The terms the three guides lean on most. Each entry in the crypto futures glossary gives a one-sentence definition, then an example taken from a Flipster contract page or from the published terms.