First Mover: Traders Opting for Cash and Carry Strategy as Bitcoin’s ‘Contango’ Widens
  Everything you need to make sense of the crypto markets and beyond By the CoinDesk Markets Team Edited by Lawrence Lewitinn, Managing Editor, Global Capital Markets April 12, 2021 Sponsored by  (Price data as of April 12 @11:00 UTC) If you were forwarded this newsletter and would like to receive it, sign up here.
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Market Moves by Omkar Godbole  Traders Opting for Cash and Carry Strategy as Bitcoin's 'Contango' Widens
Savvy traders are locking returns of over 40% in the wake of bitcoin (BTC)'s widening contango – the spread between prices in futures and spot markets, also known as futures basis/premium.
"With the premium on bitcoin futures expanding to as high as 40% per annum for the June expiry, there is a lot of interest from cash and carry traders to arbitrage the premium and lock-in risk-free gains," Pankaj Balani, co-founder and CEO of the Singapore-based Delta Exchange, told CoinDesk in a WhatsApp chat.
Cash and carry arbitrage is a market-neutral strategy aimed to profit from price discrepancies in one or more markets.
It involves buying an asset in the spot market against a short position in the futures market when the futures draw a significant premium relative to the spot price. That way, traders pocket a fixed return, as the premium decays over time and converges with the spot price on the expiry date.
 Bitcoin futures basis (Source: Skew) According to data source Skew, bitcoin's June expiry futures listed on major exchanges such as Binance, Huobi, OKEx, BitMEX, and Deribit are currently drawing an annualized premium of 44% to 48%. Meanwhile, those listed on the Delta Exchange are trading at a premium of 30%.
So, a carry trade taken now will yield an annualized return of 44% to 48% – a number significantly higher than interest rates on crypto deposits offered by lending platforms such as Genesis and BlockFi or government bond yields in emerging economies.
CoinDesk 20 data shows bitcoin broke out of a multi-week consolidation early Saturday with a sudden $3,000 rise to $61,065. Futures premium on major exchanges increased along with the spot market price, rising from roughly 32% to over 40%.
However, market chatter shows growing concerns regarding the uptick in perpetual futures funding rate – the cost of holding long positions calculated and paid every eight hours.
Read the original story here: Traders Opting for Cash and Carry Strategy as Bitcoin's 'Contango' Widens
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Technician's Take by Damanick Dantes Bitcoin Struggles Near $60K; Short-Term Support Around $58K Over the weekend, bitcoin (BTC) tested resistance around $61,000 twice before sellers gained control. Bitcoin's struggle near its all-time high has been a consistent theme since February as the uptrend consolidates. Initial support is around $58,000 on the four-hour chart.  Four-hour BTC chart shows all-time high resistance with lower support levels and RSI (Source: TradingView)
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