A divergence in global bitcoin Market sentiment is broadening as US institutional investors hold firm while offshore traders withdraw their positions.
The gap is clearer in futures markets. CME, the go-to platform for hedge funds and institutional desks in the US, shows that traders are still paying a premium to stay long in bitcoin, according to NYDIG head of research Greg Cipolaro.
This is evident on a one-month annualized basis, essentially the futures’ profit margin over spot prices, which remains higher than its offshore counterpart, Deribit.
“The steeper decline in the offshore base suggests a lower appetite for leveraged long exposure,” Cipolaro wrote. “The widening spread between CME and Deribit functions as a real-time indicator of geographic risk appetite.”
Bitcoin earlier this month fell to $60,000 before recovering. Some attributed the sell-off to growing concerns that quantum computing would undermine the system’s cryptographic security. NYDIG found that the numbers don’t support that explanation.
On the one hand, bitcoin’s performance has closely followed that of publicly traded quantum computing companies such as IONQ Inc. (IONQ) and D-Wave Quantum Inc. (QBTS). If quantum risk really weighed on cryptocurrencies, those stocks would rise while bitcoin falls.
Instead, they fell together, pointing to a broader decline in appetite for long-dated, future-driven assets. On top of that, search data on Google Trends shows that interest in “quantum computing bitcoin” increases when the price of BTC increases.
