qGold Perp
Trade gold in Bitcoin with a perpetual margined and settled in sats.
Overview
qGold Perp is a perpetual on gold, quoted in US dollars, margined and settled in sats, at a BTC/USD rate locked when you place the order. It is the first qAsset market and is open as a beta to a limited set of users.
This page covers what is specific to gold. How the rate lock, funding and the quanto adjustment work for every qAsset is explained on qAssets.
Contract specification
| Description | Value |
|---|---|
| Instrument / pair | quanto_perp / xau_usd |
| Quantity unit | Troy ounce (oz) |
| Underlying asset | Gold |
| Price reference | LNM Gold Perp Index |
| P&L | Quantity × (Exit price − Entry price) ÷ Locked BTC rate × 100,000,000 |
| Margin mode | Isolated |
| Max leverage | 20x |
| Price tick | $0.10 |
| Quantity step | 0.01 oz |
| Max quantity per order | 50 oz |
| Max quantity per account | 1,000 oz |
| Funding interval | Every 4 hours |
| Quanto adjustment | Charged or received every 4 hours, from margin |
Margin and liquidation
Your notional is the size of the position, expressed in sats at your locked rate:
Notional (sats) = Quantity × Entry price ÷ Locked BTC rate × 100,000,000Your margin is that notional divided by your leverage:
Margin (sats) = Notional ÷ LeverageBecause the bitcoin rate is fixed, your liquidation level is a price in the underlying and nothing else. It does not move when bitcoin moves:
Long: Liquidation price = Entry price × (1 − 1 / Leverage)
Short: Liquidation price = Entry price × (1 + 1 / Leverage)Funding and the quanto adjustment are settled from your margin every 4 hours, exactly as funding works on Futures. A position held for a long time at high leverage sees its margin erode, and its liquidation level move closer, even if the underlying has not moved at all. A leveraged position left open indefinitely will eventually be liquidated by fees alone.
Maintenance margin
A maintenance margin is reserved beside your trade margin. It is not part of the margin that absorbs P&L; it is held back to cover the fees that would be charged if the position were liquidated, computed at the highest tier fee rate regardless of your own tier.
| Order type | Reserved |
|---|---|
| Market | Opening fee + closing fee |
| Limit | Closing fee |
This is the same mechanism as Futures.
Price reference
It is worth separating two things that are easy to confuse.
- The underlying asset is what you are taking a view on. For qGold Perp that is gold.
- The reference market is where we read gold's price from. That is a venue, or a basket of venues, quoting an instrument that tracks gold.
| Price | Reference |
|---|---|
| Gold | LNM Gold Perp Index |
| BTC/USD rate lock | LN Markets BTC/USD index (Binance, Bybit, OKX basket) |
LNM Gold Perp Index
The LNM Gold Perp Index is a weighted average of the last traded prices of XAUUSDT perpetual futures across the constituent exchanges. It is used to compute profit and loss on qGold Perp.
The current composition is as follows:
| Exchange | Weight |
|---|---|
| Binance | 100% |
Building the reference as an index rather than pointing directly at one venue's feed means the composition can be widened later — adding exchanges, reweighting — without changing the contract, the API or anything you have open. It is the same construction as the BTCUSD Basket behind Futures.
This composition may be modified without prior notice.
Order execution, including liquidation and trigger orders, runs against available order book liquidity, not against the price reference. This is the same behaviour as Futures.
Funding
Funding on qGold Perp is exchanged every 4 hours, at 00:00, 04:00, 08:00, 12:00, 16:00 and 20:00 UTC. The rate is the Binance XAUUSDT perpetual funding rate, passed through 1:1. Direction and settlement follow the rules under Funding fee.
Quanto adjustment
The adjustment on gold uses the formula under Quanto adjustment. At recent values — correlation +0.19, gold volatility 14.8%, bitcoin volatility 51.2% — that gives:
0.19 × 0.148 × 0.512 = 1.44% per year ≈ 0.39 bp per dayThe current rate is shown on the Rates screen. The adjustment is fixed every 4 hours and deducted from — or added to — the position's margin.
Trading hours
qGold Perp trades 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, including weekends and gold market holidays. Liquidations stay live throughout, for the reasons set out under Trading hours.
Gold's OTC market is closed at weekends. Expect thinner order books and wider spreads on qGold Perp while it is closed, and size and leverage accordingly if you intend to hold across a weekend.
Read next
qAssets explains the quanto mechanism, the worked scenarios, and the costs common to every qAsset.