What Is the META Perpetual on BloFin? Meta Futures Explained

Contracts on the shares of big US companies now sit on crypto exchanges right next to the Bitcoin and Ether futures most traders already know. Someone who keeps their savings in stablecoins can follow a company's share price from the same account, at any hour, without opening a brokerage account first.

The screen makes it look simpler than it is. You see a familiar ticker and a price that keeps moving after New York has closed for the night, yet your result depends on rules the chart never shows. Those rules set where the price comes from and what holding the position costs every few hours. They also set how far the price can move before the position is closed, and when the exchange stops letting you open a new one.

A perpetual future is the contract that carries those rules. It has no end date and takes its price from an index, while a regular payment between buyers and sellers keeps it close to that index for as long as you hold it. Each rule is written down on the exchange's contract pages, and each one is worth reading before a first order.

Meta Platforms has one of these contracts on BloFin, the METAUSDT Perpetual, which trades alongside the tokenized share on the METAX/USDT Spot market. The perpetual is the route with leverage, shorting and funding, and its terms explain what you are actually trading.

What is the META perpetual on BloFin?

The META perpetual on BloFin, METAUSDT, is a USDT-margined futures contract with no expiry date that tracks Meta Platforms' share price through a price index. Each contract is 0.01 of a META share and leverage runs from 1x to 20x. Its mark price was 731.04 USDT on the morning of October 12, 2026 (source: BloFin METAUSDT contract details).

USDT-margined means everything about the position is counted in USDT, the dollar stablecoin: the margin you post, the profit or loss, the fees and the funding. If Meta's price rises while you hold a long position, your USDT balance grows, and no share or token ever lands in your account. The contract's own page lists the terms that matter most for a first trade.

The contract tracks Meta's price and gives you nothing else that a shareholder gets. BloFin's stock futures are not securities and carry no ownership of the shares, of any tokenized version of them or of the index. They come with no right to dividends, interest, votes or rights offerings such as splits, spin-offs and subscription rights (source: BloFin stock futures notice). Meta pays a dividend to its shareholders each quarter (source: Meta), and how Meta's dividend reaches METAX and the perpetual covers what that gap costs.

Your margin and any profit sit as USDT in your BloFin account. Your claim is therefore on BloFin, the exchange that holds the balance and runs the contract. BloFin also notes that stock futures are not backed, insured or guaranteed by any government or institution (source: BloFin stock futures notice). USDT is the plain way to margin a position, and trading Meta with leverage covers which other coins can back one and the extra risk they bring.

For the company behind the contract, what Meta stock is covers the business, the ticker and the share class the perpetual follows.

How the META perpetual tracks Meta's price

The META perpetual takes its price from an index that BloFin builds from prices quoted by outside data vendors. When no outside data arrives, the index holds its most recent value. The contract's trading price and its mark price both stay close to that index, and that is how the perpetual follows Meta's share price.

BloFin describes the index in two notices. The listing notice says the index is built from prices quoted by third-party data vendors. It stays fixed at its last value when no outside data is available (source: BloFin METAUSDT listing notice). The stock futures notice adds that these contracts are based on a basket of tokenized stock indices already trading in the market (source: BloFin stock futures notice). Tokenized prices keep quoting while Nasdaq is shut, so the index usually keeps moving outside US hours as well.

Three prices sit at the top of the trading page, and each one has its own use. The mark price and last price are easy to mix up. In one reading taken before Nasdaq opened, the three sat within 0.10 USDT of each other.

BloFin's help center sets out those roles. The mark price combines the index with a funding basis, and it triggers liquidation and values open positions. The last price is simply the most recent trade (source: BloFin help center on index, mark and last price). That is why a sharp spike in trades can show on the chart without closing anyone's position, because liquidation waits for the smoother mark price.

Say you open a long position while the three prices sit within a few cents of each other, as they did in that reading. Your unrealized profit follows the mark price, so a single large trade that briefly pushes the last price up barely changes it. A move in the index, though, carries the mark price with it.

The perpetual and the tokenized share can show different prices, since one follows an index and the other its own order book. The page on why METAX and the perpetual disagree measures that gap with dated readings. The live index, mark and last prices are on the METAUSDT Perpetual page.

META perpetual contract specifications

BloFin listed the META perpetual at 3PM UTC on March 26, 2026, with leverage of 1x to 10x. The contract now allows 1x to 20x, and each contract is 0.01 META. One order can carry at most 2,000 META as a limit order, or 200 META at market (source: BloFin METAUSDT contract details).

Some terms have stayed the same since the first day, and leverage is the one that has changed. The listing notice set the contract size, the price step, the funding interval and 24/7 trading (source: BloFin METAUSDT listing notice).

The price step is small in money terms. One contract is 0.01 META, so a 0.01 USDT tick moves the value of one contract by 0.0001 USDT. On a full META share's worth of contracts, the same tick is worth 0.01 USDT.

BloFin also caps how far an order's price can sit from the index. In the first 10 minutes after a contract is listed, a buy order can be priced at most 3% above the index. A sell order can be priced at most 3% below it. After that, the limit also takes the average premium of the last two minutes into account, while the 3% bands still set the outer limits (source: BloFin METAUSDT contract details).

Buy limit = index × 1.03, and sell limit = index × 0.97.

With the index at 731.01, the buy limit sits at no more than about 752.94 USDT and the sell limit at no less than about 709.08 USDT. A limit order typed in by mistake at 800 USDT would be rejected before it could fill far above the market.

The contract page carries one more line that matters for anyone holding a position for weeks. BloFin will adjust parameters based on the actual market without issuing a separate announcement (source: BloFin METAUSDT contract details). Leverage, order caps and tiers can therefore differ between two visits, so the contract page on the day you trade is the current rulebook. The same page shows the size of the contract's insurance fund, 7,084.02 USDT on the morning the mark price read 731.04 USDT.

Leverage, margin and liquidation

Leverage on the META perpetual depends on position size. Positions up to 100 META can use 20x, with a maintenance margin rate of 2.50%, and larger positions step down through seven more tiers to 1x (source: BloFin METAUSDT position tiers). A position is liquidated when its margin falls to the maintenance level, which at 20x comes after a move of about 2.5%.

Maintenance margin is the least margin a position must keep, set as a share of its value. BloFin counts your open position, your open orders and any new order together when it decides which tier applies (source: BloFin METAUSDT position tiers).

A liquidation happens when the margin rate falls to 100%. The margin rate is your margin plus profit, divided by the maintenance margin plus the closing fee (source: BloFin liquidation price FAQ). For a single long position in isolated margin, the help center gives the price as a formula.

Long liquidation price = (margin − size × entry price) ÷ (size × (maintenance margin rate + closing fee rate − 1)).

Say you open a 1 META long position at 731.11 USDT in isolated margin, inside tier 1. The closing fee rate is the 0.06% regular taker fee listed in BloFin's fee structure. The same formula with the signs flipped gives the price for a short.

Those distances are worth setting next to how Meta moves. Meta released its second-quarter results after the market close on July 29, 2026 (source: Meta). BloFin's own hourly prices show the perpetual falling from 598.98 USDT at 7PM UTC to a low of 520.12 USDT between 9PM and 10PM UTC. That drop of about 13.2%, worked out from those prices, was enough to liquidate a 10x long opened before the report. Trading Meta around earnings looks at that night hour by hour.

Sometimes a position is closed out below its bankruptcy price, the price at which its margin is used up. The loss then falls first on the contract's insurance fund, a pool built from BloFin's own funds and from surpluses left by earlier liquidations. Each USDT perpetual has its own pool. If that pool runs short, or drops 30% from its peak within eight hours, auto-deleveraging (ADL) takes over. It closes positions on the winning side against the liquidated one at the mark price, starting with the most profitable and most leveraged (source: BloFin auto-deleveraging FAQ). Leverage and liquidation explains the general mechanics with more examples.

Funding and trading fees

Funding on the META perpetual is a payment between traders every eight hours, at 4PM, 12AM and 8AM UTC. When the rate is positive, long positions pay shorts, and when it is negative, shorts pay longs. Most settlements from October 6 to October 12, 2026 came in at +0.0120%, so longs were paying.

Each payment is your position's full value times the rate, whatever leverage you use. A position closed before a settlement pays or receives nothing for it (source: BloFin funding rate FAQ). The rate itself comes from the premium, how far the contract trades above or below the index, plus a small interest part of 0.03% a day. BloFin then holds the result inside upper and lower limits it sets for risk control (source: BloFin funding rate FAQ). Crypto funding rates covers why perpetuals use this payment at all.

The interval can also change. BloFin's rules allow settlements every 8, 4, 2 or 1 hours and say the timing may be adjusted in real time to market conditions (source: BloFin funding rate FAQ). On the evening of Sunday, September 20, 2026, the META funding history shows settlements every hour from 8PM to 11PM UTC. Three of them came in at −0.0120% and the last at −0.0095% (source: BloFin METAUSDT funding history).

Here is what funding cost a long position recently. From 4PM UTC on October 6 to 8AM UTC on October 12, the META perpetual settled 18 times. Sixteen settlements came in at +0.0120%, one at +0.0065% and one at +0.0175%, for a total of about 0.216% (source: BloFin METAUSDT funding history).

A 10 META short of the same value would have received those amounts. The rate moves, though: in the first five days of October it swung between −0.0017% and +0.0262%.

Trading fees come on top of funding. BloFin's regular futures rate is 0.02% for a maker order, which rests in the order book before it fills. A taker order, which fills at once, pays 0.06%, and accounts that trade more pay lower rates on both. Opening that 7,311.10 USDT position with a market order costs about 4.39 USDT. A limit order that rests first costs about 1.46 USDT, worked out at those rates.

Liquidity and open interest

Open interest on the META perpetual, the total size of positions still open, was 1,086.74 META on the morning of October 12, 2026. That is about 794,000 USDT at the mark price (source: BloFin METAUSDT market data). Volume over the previous 24 hours was 249.84 META, a quiet weekend figure, while busy weekdays in early October ran between about 470 and 670 META.

The 24-hour volume on the trading page shows how much changed hands, and BloFin's daily candles show how much that swings with the US week (source: BloFin METAUSDT market data). Traders swapped 132.02 META on Saturday, October 10, and 132.34 META on Sunday, October 11, against 669.58 META on Thursday, October 8. A US market holiday looks like a weekend too, with 114.75 META traded on Labor Day, September 7, 2026, when Nasdaq was closed.

Depth matters more than volume for a single order. At 11.02AM UTC that same morning, the 50 best offers to sell added up to 220.00 META between 731.05 and 731.65 USDT. The 50 best bids added up to 159.25 META. A market buy of 200 META, the largest single order allowed at market, would have filled across all of those offers at an average of about 731.47 USDT. That is roughly 0.06% above the best price on screen, worked out from the book.

For most beginner sizes that difference is tiny. A 1 META market order at that moment would have filled within the first two price levels. Market depth explains how to read an order book before sending a larger order, and why the same order costs more when the book is thin.

Open interest moves more slowly than volume and rises when new positions are opened. Watching it next to funding shows whether new money is crowding into one side. Rising open interest with a high positive rate means more traders are paying to hold longs.

The META perpetual through the Muse rally

The META perpetual had its busiest day in recent weeks on Monday, September 21, 2026, when 1,507.80 META traded, about 1.08 million USDT. That was the day Meta's shares closed 11.3% higher at $741.25, as investors bet on Muse, the personal AI agent Meta launched earlier in September (source: The Next Web).

The day before had been quiet, with 97.01 META traded on Sunday, September 20, so the Monday figure was about 15.5 times higher (source: BloFin METAUSDT market data). Volume stayed above 860 META a day through Thursday, September 24. That day the perpetual closed the UTC day at 776.10 USDT, close to Meta's Nasdaq close of $777.59 (source: Stock Analysis).

Funding told its own story. From 4PM UTC on September 17 to 4PM UTC on September 22, 18 of the 20 settlements printed −0.0120%. Shorts were paying longs in the days just before the jump and through most of it, apart from one settlement at +0.0190% on the morning of September 21 (source: BloFin METAUSDT funding history). A negative rate means the perpetual was trading below its index, so holding a short cost money even as the price climbed.

The pullback that followed changed both readings. The perpetual closed the UTC day of October 9 at 718.58 USDT, about 7.4% below its September 24 close. Meta's Nasdaq close that day was $718.67 (source: Stock Analysis). Since 4PM UTC on October 6, funding has settled at or near +0.0120%. What moves Meta's stock price sorts the news behind both moves.

Meta reports its third-quarter 2026 results after the market close on Wednesday, October 21, 2026 (source: Meta Q3 2026 date announcement). A year earlier, its third-quarter 2025 results came after the market close on October 29, 2025 (source: Meta). A report released after the 4PM ET close lands in the hours when BloFin may limit the contract to orders that reduce a position.

Trading hours and reduce-only windows

The META perpetual quotes 24 hours a day. Outside US regular trading hours, at weekends and on US market holidays, BloFin may limit it to reduce-only orders, which can close or shrink a position and cannot open or add to one. Until November 1, 2026, regular hours run from 1.30PM to 8PM UTC on weekdays.

The listing notice puts it plainly: outside the main market's regular trading hours, order placement is restricted to reduce-only orders for closing positions (source: BloFin METAUSDT listing notice). The stock futures notice puts regular hours at 1.30PM to 8PM UTC during US daylight saving time. On standard time it runs from 2.30PM to 9PM UTC, and the notice lists the 2026 holidays (source: BloFin stock futures notice). US daylight saving time ends on Sunday, November 1, 2026 (source: NIST), so the window moves an hour later in UTC from Monday, November 2.

Say you decide at 10PM UTC on a Tuesday in October to open a long position. Nasdaq closed two hours earlier, so you would wait until 1.30PM UTC the next day to open it. A position you already hold keeps moving with the index overnight, and its funding keeps settling. You can still close it, because these windows block new exposure while leaving exits open.

That is also why the perpetual can be liquidated on a weekend. The index can keep moving while you are unable to add to the position, so the margin you posted before Friday's close has to carry it until Monday. Meta stock price gaps when Nasdaq is closed works through those gaps, and METAX trading hours against Nasdaq sets the token's own hours beside the perpetual's.

How the META perpetual compares with a CFD and a CME future

The META perpetual differs from a Meta future on CME and from a Meta CFD in its end date, size and holding cost. CME's Meta future covers 100 shares and ends every quarter. A CFD is a contract a provider sells you directly. The perpetual has no end date, covers 0.01 META, and charges or pays funding.

CME Group's Meta future covers 100 Class A shares and is listed for the March, June, September and December quarters. It is settled in cash and stops trading at 4PM ET on the third Friday of its month (source: CME Group Meta contract specs). A contract for difference is sold over the counter by its provider. The UK's Financial Conduct Authority found that the overnight funding charges on CFDs vary widely between providers and can add up to significant ongoing costs (source: Financial Conduct Authority CFD review).

A dated future carries its holding cost inside its price, so the gap between the future and the share narrows as expiry nears and then closes. A perpetual has no such day, which is why it needs funding to stay near the index. That payment is the main running cost of holding one for months, and perpetuals against dated futures goes further into the difference.

For a crypto holder, the practical gap is access. A CME future needs a futures broker and dollars, and a CFD needs a provider that serves your country. The perpetual runs from a USDT balance you may already hold.

What traders use the META perpetual for

Traders use the META perpetual to take a leveraged long or short view on Meta's price from a USDT balance. They also use it to hedge a Meta holding and to trade around Meta's earnings and news. Each use has its own steps and risks, and the same contract terms apply to all of them.

A plain leveraged long is the starting point, and because the contract can be sold as easily as bought, the same terms carry a bet on a fall. Shorting Meta on BloFin sets out that trade, in which funding works in the short's favor whenever the rate is positive.

A holder of METAX, or of Meta shares elsewhere, can open a short on the perpetual to offset a fall. The same contract can also be paired with another company's perpetual. Hedging Meta with the perpetual covers both, and Meta against Amazon compares the two ad businesses most often traded as a pair.

Event traders watch the calendar. Trading Meta around events and court rulings covers product launches and legal decisions, next to the earnings guide. If you are still choosing a route, METAX or the META perpetual weighs holding the token against trading the contract.

Looking to trade Meta's price with the perpetual? To get started, you'll need to first create a BloFin account, fund your account with cryptocurrency, and go to the METAX/USDT Spot trading page or the METAUSDT Perpetual trading page.

Frequently asked questions

What happens to the META perpetual if Meta splits its stock?

BloFin says it will publish a separate market notice for each stock split, reverse split, merger or spinoff that could move the price of the share behind a stock perpetual. That notice sets out how the event is handled (source: BloFin METAUSDT listing notice). Meta has never split its stock (source: Stock Analysis statistics), so no such notice exists for METAUSDT yet. If one is announced, read BloFin's notice before holding a position through the date.

Can you trade the META perpetual from any country?

Access depends on where you live. BloFin's stock futures are unavailable in some countries, and each user is responsible for making sure their use of them follows local laws (source: BloFin stock futures notice). Check BloFin's terms for your country before you deposit.

What is the smallest META perpetual order?

The smallest order is 0.01 META, which is one contract (source: BloFin METAUSDT contract details). At a last price of 731.11 USDT, that is about 7.31 USDT of exposure. It needs about 7.31 USDT of margin at 1x, or about 0.37 USDT at 20x. A position that small lets you watch how funding and price moves feel before you size up.

Do you pay funding if you close before the settlement time?

A position closed before a settlement neither pays nor receives that settlement's funding. BloFin notes that the check can take up to about a minute. A position opened or still open a few seconds after 4PM, 12AM or 8AM UTC can therefore still be charged or paid for it (source: BloFin funding rate FAQ). The countdown to the next settlement is shown on the trading page beside the current rate.

Why is the META perpetual's price different from Meta's last Nasdaq close?

The perpetual keeps quoting after Nasdaq shuts, so by Monday morning it reflects trading since Friday's close. Before Nasdaq opened on Monday, October 12, 2026, the index read 731.01 USDT. That was about 1.7% above Meta's Friday close of $718.67, worked out from Stock Analysis prices. The gap usually narrows once the regular session starts and the share itself trades again.

Researched and written by the BloFin Academy editorial team with AI-assisted drafting. All facts independently verified. Primary sources include BloFin's METAUSDT contract details, position tiers and funding history, its METAUSDT listing notice of March 26, 2026 and its stock futures notice of April 21, 2026. They also include BloFin's help center articles on funding, liquidation price, index and mark price, and auto-deleveraging; CME Group's Meta contract specifications; the Financial Conduct Authority's CFD review; Stock Analysis price history; Meta's investor relations releases; NIST; and The Next Web, current as of October 12, 2026.

Nothing in this article constitutes financial advice, and nothing in it is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold Meta in any form. The METAUSDT Perpetual uses leverage, so a move of about 2.5% against a 20x position can liquidate it. On a results night, Meta's price has fallen further than that within two hours. Funding is charged or paid at every settlement, every eight hours at present, while a position is open, and outside US trading hours BloFin may accept only orders that reduce a position, so a holding can keep losing while you are unable to add to it. Past performance does not indicate future results. Do your own research and consider your risk tolerance before you trade on BloFin.