Digital asset analytics firm Block Scholes examined the liquidity of several Bitget perpetual contracts linked to traditional assets. The researchers assessed not only trading volume, but also spreads, order book depth, potential slippage, and market behavior during periods of elevated volatility.
The study focused on four USDT-margined contracts: XAU-USDT, linked to gold, SPY-USDT, linked to the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, QQQ-USDT, linked to the Invesco QQQ Nasdaq-100 ETF, and NVDA-USDT, which tracks Nvidia shares. These are derivative instruments: they provide price exposure to the underlying assets but do not represent direct ownership of the shares or ETFs and do not grant shareholder rights.
Block Scholes Examined Spreads, Depth, and Slippage
To evaluate execution quality, the researchers used several metrics. The spread reflects the difference between the best available bid and ask prices, order book depth shows how much liquidity is available across different price levels, and slippage helps estimate how much the average execution price may change as order size increases.
The analysis used a combination of public API snapshots and historical Bitget order book data covering the period from September 2025 to May 2026. Slippage was simulated by walking hypothetical market orders through the visible liquidity available in the book.
The study also highlighted the limitations of this methodology. Visible resting depth does not guarantee that the same amount of liquidity will be available during an actual trade, while simulated slippage calculations do not inсlude every possible cost, such as exchange fees, funding payments, hidden liquidity, replenishing liquidity during execution, or the effect of execution algorithms.
Spreads Remained Tight During U.S. Trading Hours
In one observation conducted on May 18, 2026, roughly one hour after the U.S. equity session opened, Block Scholes recorded relatively tight spreads across all four instruments.
For XAU-USDT, the spread was approximately 0.02 basis points, while SPY-USDT and QQQ-USDT were both around 0.14 bps. The NVDA-USDT spread was approximately 0.44 bps. In that specific observation, all four instruments remained below half a basis point.
However, market conditions changed throughout the trading session. For example, shortly after the U.S. market opened, the SPY-USDT spread was around 1.76 bps, before narrowing to approximately 0.14 bps about an hour later. This shows that even though perpetual contracts trade around the clock, their liquidity can still depend on activity in the underlying market.
Larger Orders Highlight the Importance of Order Book Depth
A tight spread at the top of the order book does not necessarily mean that a large position can be executed at minimal cost. The larger the order, the more liquidity levels it may need to consume.
For SPY-USDT, a simulated market buy of $100,000 produced approximately 14.88 bps of modeled slippage near the U.S. market open and around 10.66 bps about an hour later.
When the hypothetical order size increased to $500,000, the difference became even more significant: approximately 46.07 bps of simulated slippage near the open compared with around 24.90 bps one hour later. The contract remained the same and the order size did not change, but the amount of available liquidity did.
This is why large traders should not evaluate a market based only on the quoted spread. A more useful sequence is: spread → depth → order size → expected slippage.
NVDA-USDT Order Book Depth Reached Several Million Dollars
The researchers also paid particular attention to the NVDA-USDT contract. By mid-May 2026, its median visible resting liquidity within 2% of the midpoint was approximately $4.1 million.
According to Block Scholes, this represented roughly three-quarters of the comparable resting depth on Bitget’s BTC/USDT spot market. However, the study emphasized that this comparison does not mean the two markets were equally liquid under all market conditions or for every order size.
Still, the figures indicate that the Nvidia-linked perpetual contract had developed a sufficiently deep order book for its liquidity to be meaningfully compared with one of the exchange’s largest cryptocurrency spot markets.
Weekend Volume Fell Sharply, but Spreads Did Not Widen Proportionally
Perpetual contracts continue trading even when the traditional market for the underlying asset is closed. For this reason, Block Scholes also analyzed how the instruments behaved during weekends.
Depending on the contract, trading volume was approximately 65% to 90% lower than on weekdays. However, median spreads during the observed period did not widen by a similar magnitude.
The study reported approximate median spreads of 0.02 bps for XAU-USDT, 0.8 bps for QQQ-USDT, 1.0 bps for NVDA-USDT, and 1.3 bps for SPY-USDT.
This once again highlights the difference between trading volume and the quality of current market quotes. Lower activity does not necessarily result in an equally dramatic widening of spreads, although order book depth and the execution of larger orders may still differ significantly from normal U.S. trading hours.
Liquidity Deteriorated During Market Stress but Later Recovered
One of the most important parts of the study was the analysis of order book behavior during a period of elevated volatility on February 28, 2026.
During the stress event, spreads widened across contracts linked to equities. For NVDA-USDT, the spread increased from a baseline of around 0.6 bps to approximately 3.4 bps, before returning relatively quickly to levels seen before the event.
Market depth deteriorated more significantly. Median resting depth within 1% of the midpoint declined by approximately 32% for NVDA, 52% for SPY, and 54% for QQQ. QQQ-USDT depth within the 1% range fell to roughly $109,000, compared with a typical Saturday median of around $191,000.
The study therefore does not suggest that liquidity remained unchanged during volatility. Instead, it allows traders to quantify both the deterioration and the subsequent recovery.
Why Trading Volume Alone Is Not Enough
Cryptocurrency exchanges often use daily trading volume as the main indicator of market activity. However, volume reflects completed trading activity, while order book depth shows how much visible liquidity is available at the moment a trader wants to execute an order.
A market may have high historical trading volume while still having relatively limited depth when a large order is submitted.
For this reason, data on spreads, depth, and potential slippage can be especially useful when evaluating relatively new markets for stock-linked perpetual contracts.
The Study Does Not Prove Bitget Leads All Competing Exchanges
Block Scholes analyzed Bitget’s markets specifically and did not conduct a synchronized comparison with Binance, Kraken, OKX, Bybit, Hyperliquid, or other venues offering equity-linked derivatives.
As a result, the findings do not prove that Bitget has the deepest or lowest-cost SPY, QQQ, or NVDA perpetual markets across the entire industry. A proper cross-exchange comparison would require identical time windows, order sizes, depth ranges, and comparable contract structures.
The main conclusion of the study is narrower: during the periods analyzed, Bitget’s equity-linked perpetual markets showed measurable tight spreads, multimillion-dollar resting depth in NVDA-USDT, order-size-dependent slippage in SPY-USDT, and quantifiable changes in liquidity during periods of market stress.
For traders, the main value of this type of data is transparency. Instead of relying on a general claim of high liquidity, they can independently evaluate spreads, order book depth, position size, expected slippage, and market behavior during periods of increased volatility.