Spot Market

A spot market is where an asset is bought or sold for immediate delivery at the current price, as opposed to a derivatives market where the contract settles later. On a centralised crypto exchange a spot trade moves coins between internal account balances at once, and on a decentralised exchange it swaps tokens inside a single on-chain transaction. Because there is no borrowed money in a plain spot purchase, the position cannot be liquidated by a price move, though the asset itself can still fall in value. Spot venues also anchor the wider market: index prices used to settle perpetual futures and mark collateral are typically drawn from a basket of spot exchanges.