A Divergence in Global Bitcoin Market sentiment is broadening as U.S. institutional investors hold steady while offshore traders exit their positions.
The gap is most evident in the futures markets. CME, the go-to platform for hedge funds and institutional desks in the United States, shows that traders are still paying a premium to go long bitcoin, according to NYDIG head of research Greg Cipolaro.
This is evident on a one-month annualized basis, essentially the markup of futures over spot prices, which remains higher than that of its offshore counterpart, Deribit.
“The steeper decline in the offshore basis suggests a reduction in appetite for leveraged long exposure,” Cipolaro wrote. “The growing gap between the CME base and Deribit functions as a real-time gauge of geographic risk appetite.”
Bitcoin fell to $60,000 earlier this month before rebounding. Some have attributed the selloff to growing fears that quantum computing could compromise the cryptographic security of the system. NYDIG found that the numbers do not support this explanation.
On the one hand, Bitcoin’s performance has closely tracked that of publicly traded quantum computing companies like IONQ Inc. (IONQ) and D-Wave Quantum Inc. (QBTS). If quantum risk truly weighed on crypto, these stocks would rise while bitcoin fell.
Instead, they fell together, reflecting a broader decline in appetite for long-term, future-focused assets. Additionally, search data on Google Trends shows that interest in “quantum computing bitcoin” increases when the price of BTC rises.
