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Why is there a price difference between Bitcoin spot and futures?

- Different trading mechanisms: Spot requires full payment and completes the transaction and delivery on the spot; Futures are priced based on future expectations, requiring only margin payment, allowing leverage, and enabling small funds to control large-scale assets, with low capital occupation.

- Market sentiment impact: When the market is bullish, investors flock to the futures market to buy, driving prices up, causing futures to be priced higher than spot; when the market is bearish, an increase in short positions continually drives down futures prices, resulting in them being lower than spot.

- Objective market factors: If the market lacks depth and liquidity is poor, a small number of buy and sell orders can significantly impact prices, leading to a price difference between the two.

However, the price difference between the two typically does not get too large. On one hand, exchanges use a funding rate mechanism where when futures prices are high, more money is paid to shorts, and vice versa, to balance the price difference; on the other hand, if a significant price difference occurs, arbitrageurs will conduct buying and selling operations to push prices in both markets towards dynamic equilibrium.