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.

Golden Finance reports that the new Chief Economist of New Fire Group, Fu Peng, posted on Twitter that the underlying business model of Bitcoin perpetual contracts is essentially the same as the “rollover fee/overnight fee” in traditional financial markets, such as gold and industrial commodity spot trading exchanges.
Fu Peng pointed out that, in the past, gold exchanges settled daily forced liquidations, with longs and shorts paying each other rollover fees.
When retail investors held large leveraged long positions, the rollover fee became the platform’s most stable and covert source of income.
Today, Bitcoin spot platforms mainly rely on perpetual contracts, with longs and shorts settling funding rates every 8 hours.
When longs are dominant, retail investors holding long positions pay funding rates to shorts continuously.
Although the platform does not directly charge this fee, it significantly increases trading activity, open interest, and liquidity, indirectly generating substantial fee income and creating a stable and large cash flow.
Essentially, it is a business model where large investors/institutions hold long-term positions to “collect rent,” retail investors pay for leveraged longs, and platforms indirectly extract fees.