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0/ $BTC funding rate on Bitmex has reached the top ~15% of observed periods over the past 5 days and currently stands there close to its' 7D average (of 0.23% / day). It reached the highest level since 5/4-5/7 of 2018 (when it was 0.45%-0.85%/day) 
1/ Looking at historical $BTC funding periods >0.35% there's been 107 such occurrences with the overwhelming majority occurring in 2017 before Bitmex had any real market impact (for some reason May has been the most popular month with 25 observations or ~23.4%).
2/ Forward $BTC performance is surprisingly balanced after these periods but very bifurcated between late '17 / early '18 (where it was negative) and early to mid '17 (hid all dates prior to 10/8/17 for space purposes)
3/ When unpacking this there's multiple layers. 1) Bitmex relevance and 2) Bull vs Bear Market for $BTC. You can argue Bitmex was largely irrelevant until June / July of last year in terms of liquidations leading spot prices. That was largely due to crypto wealth destruction with
4/ limited fiat demand. But it'll be interestign to see how relevant Bitmex funding becomes in a bull market with new fiat demand and rails (e.g., @CMEGroup alone traded $550mn in $BTC volume yesterday).
5/ Looking at how long it takes to unwind extreme $BTC funding on average it's 6.1 days (median 5.0) with a wide range (1-18). The average / median performance b/w extreme funding and negative funding is 0.6% / 0.3% with 55.8% positivity (again bifurcated by time period)
6/ A lot of pppl looking to use short signals from '18 have gotten their face ripped off YTD. Tough to short a bull market. Well see how relevant this become on the margin. At extremes it might be helpful but if the bull market is back won't be the tail that wags the dog.
