Bitcoin Spot-Perpetual Price Gap Turns Negative – Bearish Signal or Not?

The US Federal Reserve’s public consideration of reduced interest rate cuts in 2025 resulted in numerous negative effects on financial markets. Aside from a 17% price loss for Bitcoin, data from Binance exchange shows the BTC market has now developed its largest spot-perpetual price gap.

Bitcoin Spot-Perpetual Gap Falls To -$59 – What Next? 

In the past week, the Fed announced the potential reductions of its originally planned four rate cuts in 2025 to two triggering a wide-scale selloff in the global financial markets. As the total crypto market cap dipped by 17.4%, over $1.8 trillion was lost in the stock market on a single day as investors looked to offload the risky assets in their portfolio, representing the worst daily decline since March 2020.

For the Bitcoin market, CryptoQuant analyst Darkfost reports a notable increase in selling pressure from the derivatives market, resulting in a spot-perpetual price gap of -$59.14, the largest ever in BTC history.

For context, the spot-perpetual price gap represents the difference between the price of a cryptocurrency on the spot market (where an asset is traded directly) and its perpetual futures price (contracts that speculate on an asset’s future value without expiry).

A negative gap means perpetual futures are trading at a lower price than the spot market indicating bearish sentiment in the derivatives market . Therefore, the current highly negative spot-perpetual price gap of -$59.14 suggests derivatives traders expect a short-term decline in Bitcoin’s price.

However, Darkfost notes that spot-perpetual price gaps are historically likely to reverse as markets stabilize. Therefore, extremely negative gaps such as that currently presented are often good buying opportunities as markets tend to overreact during periods of heightened uncertainty before recovery occurs.

BTC Investors Record Over $5.72 Billion Profit Amid Price Decline

In other news, crypto analyst Ali Martinez reports that the Bitcoin market witnessed over $5.72 billion in realized profit during the recent market crash. This indicates that a significant portion of Bitcoin holders were in profit ahead of the price correction, which triggered profit-taking. 

While large realized profits can signal a cautious or bearish short-term sentiment, they also suggest that bitcoin’s earlier price rally was substantial enough to benefit many investors who believe in a strong bullish structure that is sustainable in the long term.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is valued at $97,182 with a 0.83% gain in the past day. However, the asset’s trading volume is down by $50.28% and valued at $54.23 billion.

Featured image from Economic Times, chart from Tradingview