Funding, basis, open interest, executable spread — in plain language
Spread
The price difference for one asset between two venues or markets. On its own it means nothing: what matters is whether anything is left after fees and whether you can get into that difference with real size.
Executable spread
A spread measured at the prices a trade would actually fill at: buy at the ask, sell at the bid. The gap between last trades looks wider, but you cannot get into it.
Ask and bid
Ask is the best price someone will sell at, bid the best someone will buy at. There is always a gap between them: buy at the ask and sell straight back at the bid and you lose all of it.
Order book
The list of buy and sell orders with their sizes. The price everyone sees is just the top line: a large trade eats into the book and fills the rest at steadily worse prices.
Last price
The price of the most recent trade. On a quiet pair it can sit unchanged for hours and mean nothing — the book has moved since, and a spread measured against it is imaginary.
Funding
A periodic payment between longs and shorts on perpetual contracts. It keeps the contract price near spot: when longs are crowded they pay shorts, and the other way round.
Basis
The gap between the futures price and spot on the same exchange. It converges to zero by settlement, so basis is less a signal than a return you can compute in advance.
Open interest
The total of all positions still open on an instrument. Rising means fresh money is coming in, falling means positions are being closed; read together with price it says more than volume does.
Perpetual contract
A futures contract with no settlement date. You can hold it indefinitely; instead of delivery, funding payments between the two sides keep it tied to the spot price.
ADL
Auto-deleveraging. When an exchange's insurance fund cannot cover a bankrupt account, some profitable positions are closed by force — a rare but real way to lose one leg of an arbitrage without doing anything wrong.
Base and quote currency
In BTC/USDT the base is what you buy, the quote is what you pay with. The same coin against different quotes means different markets: separate liquidity, separate book, separate price.
Cash and carry
Buy spot and sell the futures at the same time, capturing the basis. While both legs are open the direction of price does not matter: the return comes from the contract converging to spot at settlement.
CEX
A centralised exchange: a company matches the orders and holds both the money and the coins. Fast and cheap, but it can close deposits and withdrawals at its own discretion, without warning.
Cross-market arbitrage
The gap between spot on one exchange and a perpetual contract on another. Unlike basis, the legs sit on different venues — which adds a transfer, separate fees and separate rules.
Dead order book
A book with almost no size near the price. The price still ticks and the spread still computes, so everything looks alive — but nothing beyond a token amount can be filled. A common source of phantom spreads.
Delisting
Removing a coin from trading. The announcement drops the price on that exchange before the others, and withdrawals close by the deadline — a spread that appears on this news is usually a trap, not an opportunity.
Deposit and withdrawal status
Whether deposits and withdrawals are open for a given coin on a given exchange. For a cross-exchange trade this matters more than the spread itself: with withdrawals closed there is nowhere to send the coin, and the position is stuck.
DEX
An exchange built on smart contracts: trades settle straight from your wallet, with no middleman. Nobody can freeze withdrawals, but the price depends on pool size and every trade costs a network fee.
Funding divergence
One exchange pays materially more funding on a perpetual than another. The return here is not price but the payments themselves: you hold both sides and collect the difference in rates.
Funding interval
How often an exchange charges funding: usually every eight hours, on some venues every hour. Rates are only comparable once normalised to the same interval — otherwise an eight-hour rate looks eight times bigger than an hourly one.
Futures arbitrage
The same price difference, but between perpetual contracts on different exchanges. No coin moves anywhere — you simply open both sides — so entry is faster and the real limit is order-book depth.
Futures-DEX arbitrage
The spread between a perpetual on a centralised exchange and the same contract on a decentralised one. DEX prices move on their own schedule and often lag, which is where the gap comes from.
Index price
The average price of an asset across several major venues. An exchange keeps it as an outside reference so that moves in its own book cannot drag the mark price wherever they like.
Launchpad
A sale of a new token on an exchange before trading opens, usually by lottery. Unlike a launchpool, you pay with money rather than by locking up another coin.
Launchpool
A distribution of a new token to those who lock up another coin on the exchange. The token costs nothing, and it usually falls when trading opens: the recipients are in a hurry to sell.
Leverage
How many times larger a position is than your own funds. It does not create profit, it multiplies it — along with the loss, pulling the liquidation price up close to the current one.
Liquidation
An exchange closing a position by force once the collateral no longer covers it. Mass liquidations cascade: each forced close moves the price, and the move triggers the next ones.
Liquidity pool
A reserve of two coins held in a smart contract that trades against it. The price comes from the ratio of the reserves, so a large trade moves it by itself — the smaller the pool, the more.
Listing
Adding a coin to an exchange. The first hours of trading are the least stable: the price on the new venue lives apart from the rest, and the gap can run to a multiple.
Maker and taker
A maker places an order into the book and waits; a taker hits someone else's and fills immediately. The taker fee is higher, and that is the one arbitrage must count: both legs are usually taken at market.
Mark price
The price an exchange uses to compute profit and liquidations: smoothed and tied to an index. It deliberately differs from the last trade — otherwise a single stray order could wipe out other people's positions.
Market-neutral position
Two opposing positions of equal size: what one loses, the other earns. The direction of the market stops mattering, and all that is left is the difference you opened the trade for.
Net spread
The price difference minus the fees on both legs. This is what decides whether there is a trade at all: a 0.4% spread with 0.1% taker fees on each side comes out at 0.2%.
On-chain spread
A coin trades cheaper in an on-chain pool than the futures on an exchange. This case shows up when deposits are closed: ordinary spread scans underrate it, while the pool is still open to buy from.
Open interest cap
The ceiling above which an exchange stops letting positions grow on an instrument. Hitting it means you can no longer join the crowded side, and it often comes shortly before a sharp move.
Order-book depth
How much size sits in orders near the current price. A spread can be wide, but if there is no size under it you will only get in small — and by the time you get out the difference is gone.
Overleveraged market
A state where open interest grows faster than price: plenty of positions have piled up but nothing is moving. Such a market usually unwinds through a cascade of liquidations in one direction.
Phantom spread
A price difference that is not really there: the price is stale, the book is empty, or the same ticker covers different tokens on different exchanges. It looks like money, but there is no way into it.
Pre-market
Trading in a token before it officially reaches spot. The price has nothing to anchor to, delivery happens later, and the usual reference points do not apply.
Prediction market
A venue where people bet on the outcome of an event and the contract price equals the implied probability. The same outcome is priced differently across venues — which is where the spreads come from.
Slippage
The gap between the price you expected and the one your order actually filled at. The larger the size and the thinner the book, the more it eats the spread — and the more often the spread disappears on the way.
Spot arbitrage
A coin trades cheaper on one spot exchange and dearer on another. You buy where it is cheap and sell where it is dear; the main risk is not price but transfer — with the network closed, the coin cannot be moved.
Spread persistence
A requirement that the difference holds for several seconds in a row rather than flashing for a single tick. A one-second blip cannot be caught anyway, so it never becomes an alert.
Spread under size
The same spread, recomputed for a specific entry size. Shown as a ladder — what is left at one thousand dollars, at ten thousand and beyond: the top of the book rarely holds all of it.
Stablecoin
A coin pegged to a currency, usually the dollar. Pairs against different stablecoins are comparable but not identical: the stablecoin itself drifts from the dollar, and that drift lands in the spread.
TGE
The moment a token is first issued and becomes transferable. Before it, trading is only possible on the pre-market; after it, the coin starts an ordinary exchange life.
Ticker collision
The same ticker can stand for different tokens on different exchanges. Without checking the contracts, such a pair shows a spread of hundreds of percent — one that does not exist.