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description: Brief overview of the difference between spot and perpetuals
---

# Spot vs Perpetuals

### What’s the Difference?

### Spot

* You buy or sell the actual asset (like HYPE, BTC, ETH).
* You own it directly, and can transfer it out of the exchange to external wallets.
* Profit only when price goes up (unless you sell what you already hold).\


### Perpetual Futures (Perps)

* You don’t own the asset, you trade a contract tied to its price.
* You can go long (bet price goes up) or short (bet price goes down).
* No expiry date — you can hold as long as you want.
* Uses leverage: trade bigger size with smaller capital (Up to **40x Leverage**).
* Funding rates keep perp prices in line with the spot market.\


### Takeaways

* **Spot** = owning the coin.
* **Perpetuals** = betting on price moves, both ways, with leverage.

