Crypto & Futures
Spot trading buys or sells the actual asset for immediate settlement, so you own the coins and cannot go short or use leverage without borrowing; futures trading, on crypto exchanges usually perpetual contracts, trades a derivative with leverage in both directions, funding payments and a liquidation price, without ever holding the coin.
The two markets have different symbols, different API permissions, different order types for protection and different risks, even on the same exchange and for the same pair. A signal that says "SHORT" or "20x" only makes sense on futures; a signal meant for accumulation makes more sense on spot, where there is no liquidation. Mixing them up is one of the most common setup errors: a spot key with a futures bot, or a spot position shown with a futures price feed, produces rejected orders or wrong numbers.
Every AlgoVesta crypto bot is set to one market type, and the platform keeps the two strictly apart: separate positions and trade rows for the same symbol, separate price feeds (spot ticker versus futures mark price), and separate handling of protective orders. On futures, the stop and take-profit are reduce-only conditional orders; on spot, protection depends on the exchange, for example a one-cancels-the-other pair on Binance, and where an exchange cannot place a spot take-profit the limitation is shown rather than hidden. Spot orders are sized to respect the exchange's minimum notional and are checked before purchase, so the platform does not buy and immediately fail to protect. Position size on spot is expressed in quote currency, on futures as margin times leverage. See Supported exchanges for the per-exchange details and perpetual futures.
The same signal, "BTCUSDT LONG 60,000, SL 59,000, TP 63,000", runs on two bots. The spot bot buys $100 of BTC and places the protective orders the exchange supports; there is no leverage and no liquidation, and the coins sit in the spot wallet. The futures bot opens a $500 position at 5x with $100 margin, places reduce-only stop and take-profit orders, and shows a liquidation price near 48,600. A later "SHORT" signal executes only on the futures bot.