Spot Price
The current market price at which a digital asset can be immediately bought or sold.
What is Spot Price?
In digital asset trading, the spot price represents the immediate exchange rate for an asset, enabling instant settlement without future obligations. For example, on platforms like Coinbase, traders buy Bitcoin at its spot price of around $60,000 as of October 2025, reflecting real-time supply and demand. This differs from futures prices, which account for time value and storage costs.
Spot prices drive daily volumes exceeding $146 billion in Q1 2025 across crypto markets, with decentralized exchanges handling about $5 billion. They are determined by order books or AMM curves, providing benchmarks for derivatives and influencing arbitrage opportunities.
Traders use spot prices for direct ownership transfers, as seen in INDODAX where transactions occur at real-time rates, contrasting with delayed settlements in traditional finance.
Related Terms
Hard Fork of a Blockchain
A permanent split in a blockchain’s history, creating two separate chains due to incompatible consensus rule changes.
Uniswap
Uniswap is a decentralized exchange (DEX) on Ethereum and compatible blockchains, enabling peer-to-peer trading of digital assets through automated market maker (AMM) liquidity pools.
Base Chain
Coinbase's Ethereum Layer 2 network built on the OP Stack, optimized for on-chain applications and developer accessibility.
Block and Block Height
A block is a collection of transactions recorded on a blockchain, and block height is the sequential number of a block in the chain, starting from the genesis block.
Cross Margin
Margin shared across all positions in a trader’s account to cover losses.
Ask Side
The section of an order book listing all open sell orders, sorted from lowest to highest price.