Perpetual vs Spot Premium (Basis) is the difference between the perpetual futures price and the spot price, expressed as a percentage of spot. The metric answers one question: is the perpetual futures contract trading at a premium or a discount to spot?
A positive basis means the perpetual is trading above spot. This indicates a higher relative valuation for the perpetual contract and often accompanies stronger demand for long derivatives exposure. A negative basis means the opposite: the perpetual is trading below spot, at a discount.
This is not the same as the funding rate. Funding is a periodic payment between holders of long and short positions that helps keep the perpetual price close to spot. The basis is the current gap between the perpetual and spot prices, while funding is one of the mechanisms that affects that gap.
The main idea of this issue is that zero is not a standalone signal for the basis. Across 2,395 days of history since 2020, the metric was negative 71.5% of the time. The median is -0.0282%. In this aggregated series, negative basis readings were more common than positive ones. Reading it by its sign alone is meaningless. It needs to be read relative to its own regime.
In previous issues, we examined decision architecture in Decision Architecture for Bitcoin. Today, we apply the same two-layer structure to derivatives: the raw metric plus its percentile.
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