What is a perpetual futures contract

A perpetual futures contract is a bet on a price that never comes due. On October 10, 2026, that is the wrapper HTX used when it listed MAR/USDT and said the leverage goes up to 20x. The same shape is how most crypto exchanges let a trader go long or short bitcoin without buying the coin. The dated future, the kind a commodity pit still uses, expires. A perpetual does not. It stays open until the trader closes it or the margin is gone.

The name is the clue. Perpetual means there is no last day. Futures means the trader does not take delivery of the thing being tracked. The contract pays or takes the difference between the entry and the exit. USDT-margined means the collateral sitting under the bet is the stablecoin, not the stock and not the bitcoin. A reader who sees MAR PERP on a card is looking at that stack: a ticker, a perpetual, and a margin coin.

Leverage is how much price exposure the margin supports. At 1x, a trader who posts 100 dollars of USDT controls about 100 dollars of the contract. At 20x, the same 100 dollars controls about 2,000 dollars. The ceiling is the most the venue says it will allow. It is not the setting a trader has to use, and it is not a promise that the venue will keep the number. HTX's own note on the Marriott contract says the exchange can change the parameters, and that the live trading page is the record.

The cost of that extra exposure is the distance to a wipeout. At 20x, a move of about 5 percent against the position is enough to erase the posted margin, before fees. At 5x, the same wipeout takes a move of about 20 percent. The arithmetic is the reason a listing that advertises 20x is a different product from a listing that stops at 2x, even when both track the same name. Crypto Key Media does not pick a side. The figure is the risk the contract is willing to hold.

Funding is the piece a stock chart does not have. Because the contract never expires, the venue needs a way to keep the perpetual near the price it tracks. Funding is a regular payment between longs and shorts. When the perpetual trades above the reference price, longs usually pay shorts. When it trades below, shorts usually pay longs. The payment is not a dividend. It is a toll for holding the side that is crowded. A card that names a perpetual and does not name the funding rate has left out the cost of staying in the trade overnight.

Liquidation is the close the trader did not choose. If the loss eats the margin down to the venue's line, the position is closed and the margin is taken. There is no phone call and no grace day of the kind a brokerage margin account sometimes gives. Isolated margin means only the coins posted to that one contract are at risk. Cross margin means the rest of the futures wallet can be pulled in. The listing page is where that choice is written. A news post that says 20x has not told a reader which of the two they would be using.

A perpetual is not the asset. A bitcoin perpetual is not a bitcoin. A Marriott perpetual is not a share of Marriott International. The Nasdaq share can pay a dividend and it carries a vote. The perpetual does neither, unless a separate note says so, and the HTX card did not say so. The Oct. 9 close of the share, $365.88, is the stock. The perpetual's price is whatever the contract last traded. They share a ticker. They do not share a claim. That listing is here: https://cryptokeymedia.com/news/htx-marriott-perpetual

The same distinction sits under every crypto perpetual a desk covers. A SOL perpetual is exposure to the SOL price. It is not SOL in a wallet, and it cannot be staked. Traders use the wrapper because it is open all night, because it allows a short, and because the margin can be a stablecoin they already hold. Those are features. They are not ownership.

What comes next is the live page rather than the announcement. The announcement names the pair and the leverage ceiling. The page names the funding, the margin mode, and the price. Until that page changes the ceiling, the number in the post is the one on the record.