Spot market
What does it mean to buy the asset itself for immediate settlement, rather than a contract about its future price?
In plain words
The spot market is where an asset is bought and sold for near-immediate settlement: the buyer pays, and the seller delivers the asset itself, so ownership passes now rather than on a future date or through a contract that tracks the price.
Why it matters
Spot trading fixes a real price and a real ownership stake, so position risk is the price move itself. Futures and perpetual contracts add funding payments and expiry, and can detach from the delivered price. Spot volume and price also show where actual ownership changed hands.
In a real week: BTC, week of 27 April 2020
In the week of 27 April 2020, BTC spot moved from 7693.1 to 8894.16, a gain of 15.61%, on 6.38bn dollars of volume, 1.44 times its prior 12-week average. The week ranged 24.38%, from a low of 7606.0 on Mon 27 April 13:00 UTC to a high of 9460.0 on Thu 30 April 06:00 UTC. Every one of those trades delivered the coin itself, so the closing price of 8894.16 was a price at which ownership actually transferred.
A common mistake
Treating spot and perpetual futures prices as different markets to be compared. They track each other closely; the futures add funding payments on top, which the spot trade does not carry.