Spot & Futures
From buying the actual coin to leverage, liquidations and funding — plus a three-part series on open interest.
Not investment advice. We do not provide investment strategies or recommendations. Everything in these articles exists to give you the quantitative and analytical tools to reach your own conclusions from real data.
Spot & Futures 101 · Chapter 1
What is the spot market?
Buying the actual coin at the actual price, settled on the spot — the order book, the bid-ask spread and what "owning it" really means.
ReadSpot & Futures 101 · Chapter 2
Perpetual futures: USDⓈ-M vs COIN-M
A futures contract with no expiry date, and the two ways it can be collateralised — linear in stablecoin, or inverse in the coin itself.
ReadSpot & Futures 101 · Chapter 3
Spot vs futures
Same underlying, very different exposure — ownership, leverage, costs and risk compared side by side, and when each one is the right tool.
ReadSpot & Futures 101 · Chapter 4
Leverage, margin & P&L
Initial and maintenance margin, isolated vs cross, and the difference between unrealized P&L on screen and realized P&L in your balance.
ReadSpot & Futures 101 · Chapter 5
Liquidation & the funding rate
Where your liquidation price comes from, how cascades feed themselves, and why funding is the mechanism that keeps a perpetual near spot.
ReadSpot & Futures 101 · Chapter 6
Long vs short & order types
The two directions you can take, and the orders that get you in and out — market, limit, stop-loss, take-profit, and post-only vs reduce-only.
ReadOpen Interest Series · Part I
What open interest is and how it is measured
Contracts still open, not contracts traded — how OI is counted, why it differs from volume, and what makes it rise, fall or stay flat.
ReadOpen Interest Series · Part II
Reading flow: open interest, price and CVD
The price × OI matrix — new longs, short covering, new shorts, longs closing — and how cumulative volume delta tells you who was the aggressor.
ReadOpen Interest Series · Part III
Open interest, funding & liquidation fuel
When rising OI meets persistent funding, positioning becomes fuel — how to spot a crowded book before the cascade, and what unwinds look like.
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