Binance to Adjust Tick Size on 5 USDT Perpetual Futures at 15:30 KST on October 22

Five USDT Perpetual Futures Switch Tick Size

Binance has asked nothing of account holders ahead of a tick size adjustment on five USDT-margined perpetual futures, the exchange's official announcement states. The affected contracts are BILL, IDOL, ESPORTS, BR and AGT. The new tick size applies to all five at 15:30 Korea time, or 06:30 UTC, on Thursday, October 22. Orders already resting on the order book stay as they are, and the exchange confirms that ongoing contract trading operations on the five pairs continue without interruption.

Tick size is the smallest price interval allowed when an order price is entered, and every level on the order book divides by this unit. A change to it resets where new limit and stop orders can rest, which is why exchanges publish the switch time in advance. On a futures screen, the tick size governs the spacing of every quoted level from the best bid to the deepest ask, so the new grid appears the moment the change lands. The notice does not state the tick size each contract will carry after the change; the five pairs move at the same moment, with no per-contract figures and no staggered rollout.

A perpetual futures contract has no expiry date and can be held open indefinitely. USDT-margined contracts, which the exchange labels U-margined, take their margin in Tether's stablecoin and settle profit and loss in the same unit, keeping collateral valuation out of the volatility that coin-margined positions carry. Traders running bots or third-party tools that hardcode price increments need to refresh those values after 06:30 UTC on October 22, since a stale increment either rejects a valid order or places it off the new grid. No deposit, cancellation or position change has been asked of users before the switch, and leverage, funding and margin requirements on the five pairs are not mentioned in the notice.

August Cut Took Tick Size to 0.001

In August, the exchange applied the same kind of change to a different group of five U-margined perpetual futures, lowering the tick size from 0.01 to 0.001 on contracts that included KUAISHOU. That adjustment carried the same statement that existing orders would not be affected, and it too was applied to the whole group at a single point in time. The August notice likewise stopped short of publishing the resulting values contract by contract. The October move follows the same template: one batch time, five contracts and no per-contract detail in the announcement.

A cut from 0.01 to 0.001 divides the price grid by ten, letting participants quote levels ten times closer to the mid price. On such a book, a bid placed at a level the new grid does not contain has to be re-quoted, which is the practical difference traders notice first. Finer increments matter most for contracts whose prices have drifted into a range where the old step is too wide for tight quoting, and the notice gives no reason for the October change beyond the schedule itself. Traders who hold positions across the switch see no change to position size, entry price or liquidation logic, since the change is scoped to the quote grid.

USDT-margined contracts are the exchange's default margin standard, so a parameter change on these pairs reaches a wider set of positions than the same change on a coin-margined book would. The contracts draw margin from Tether (USDT), the unit in which these books quote and settle, so grid changes do not interact with collateral valuation. The lineup around the unit keeps moving as well: the exchange opened a zero-fee RWUSD spot pair at 08:00 UTC, extending the USDT-denominated product set beyond futures.

Our reading of the two rounds: tick size recalibration generally follows where a contract's price has migrated, because an increment sized for one trading range stops matching the range the market actually quotes. The announcement is silent on both direction and magnitude, so the first real test arrives at 06:30 UTC on October 22, when the new grid goes live on all five pairs. Orders placed after the switch at levels computed on the old grid can be rejected if those levels no longer exist on the book. The notice guarantees that resting orders and trading operations continue, and it says nothing about any remedy for a trader whose price levels fall off the new grid, which leaves that question open.