A divergence in global bitcoin Market sentiment is growing as US institutional investors hold on while offshore traders pull back from their positions.
The gap is most evident in the futures markets. CME, the go-to platform for hedge funds and institutional desks in the US, shows that traders are still paying a premium to go long on bitcoin, according to NYDIG’s head of research, Greg Cipolaro.
This is evident on a one-month annual basis, essentially the markup for futures above spot prices, which remains higher than on offshore counterpart Deribit.
“The more pronounced decline in offshore basis suggests reduced appetite for leveraged long exposure,” Cipolaro wrote. “The widening spread between CME and Deribit basis acts as a real-time gauge of geographic risk appetite.”
Bitcoin fell to $60,000 earlier this month before rebounding. Some pinned the sell-off on growing concerns that quantum computers will undermine the system’s cryptographic security. NYDIG found that the numbers do not support this explanation.
First, bitcoin’s performance has closely followed that of publicly traded quantum computing companies such as IONQ Inc. (IONQ) and D-Wave Quantum Inc. (QBTS). If quant risk really weighed on crypto, these stocks would rise while bitcoin falls.
Instead, they fell, pointing to a broader decline in appetite for long-term, futures-driven assets. On top of that, search data on Google Trends shows interest in “quantum computing bitcoin” increases as the price of BTC rises.
