Are US Investors Buying Bitcoin Right Now?
When US money buys hard, the price on the US-regulated venue runs above the global market; when it sells, it trades below. That gap is the Coinbase Premium, one of the cleanest daily reads on American demand. This page charts it back to 2017 and adds what the market-neutral basis trade pays today, the same trade that drives much of the hedge fund positioning in our COT report.
As of 2026-08-05, the Coinbase Premium is -0.10%: US traders are bidding below the global price. The premium has kept the same sign for 92 straight days. The Bitcoin cash-and-carry trade currently pays about +4.10% annualized.
Is US money pushing price up or down?
Each point is one day's closing gap between the US-regulated price and the global price, in percent. Sustained green stretches have historically lined up with US-led rallies; deep red stretches with US-led selling.
What does the basis trade pay right now?
Buy spot, short the quarterly future, pocket the gap: that is the cash-and-carry trade. The annualized yields below are what that lock-in pays today, before fees. High carry attracts the hedge fund shorts you see in the COT report; collapsing carry often precedes them unwinding.
Computed from listed quarterly futures against spot, captured daily. Not investment advice: executing this trade involves exchange, funding and margin risk.
Methodology and sources
The premium is the daily closing price on Coinbase, the largest US-regulated venue, minus the global market's closing price for the same day, divided by the global price. Positive means US buyers are paying up; negative means US flow is selling into global demand. History runs from August 2017, the earliest date both series exist.
Both closes are UTC daily candles. The current day is excluded until its candle completes, so the newest point is always a finished day, never a moving intraday number.
Carry yields use listed quarterly futures against spot: (future minus spot) divided by spot, annualized by days to expiry. We capture the reading once a day and are building the daily record; the history chart will appear as it accumulates.
What is the Coinbase Premium?
The percentage gap between Bitcoin's price on Coinbase, the largest US-regulated exchange, and the global market price. Because Coinbase is where US institutions and ETF-related flow transact, a persistent positive premium is one of the cleanest signals that American money is buying; a persistent discount says the opposite.
Why does a fraction of a percent matter?
Arbitrage keeps the venues within a hair of each other, so even 0.1% sustained for days means real one-sided flow that arbitrageurs are struggling to absorb. The sign and the streak matter more than the size.
What is the cash-and-carry (basis) trade?
Buying spot and shorting a quarterly future locks in the price gap between them as a market-neutral yield. When that annualized yield is high, funds pile in, which shows up as hedge fund shorts in the COT report. When it collapses, those positions unwind, which can move the market even though the trade itself is neutral.
How fresh is this data?
The premium updates once a day when the UTC daily candle closes, and the carry snapshot is captured at 00:15 UTC. This is a daily positioning gauge, not an intraday feed.