Traders seek to profit from ‘cash and carry’ crypto bet after ETF launch

Traders seek to profit from ‘cash and carry’ crypto bet after ETF launch

The launch of Wall Street’s first bitcoin exchange traded fund has created an opportunity for professional investors to make juicy profits on a simple bet, enabled by a lack of large players in the young crypto market.

The price of bitcoin powered to a new record this week as $1.2bn of new cash poured into the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF in just three days, signalling voracious demand for the new investment fund that holds futures contracts that track the price of the cryptocurrency.

But those inflows and bitcoin’s new record price have also caught the eye of sophisticated traders looking to exploit the gap between the price of the coins themselves and that in futures markets.

The ProShares ETF is linked to the CME futures: as new money flows into the bitcoin ETF, the fund has to buy futures to gain exposure to the price of bitcoin. The futures contracts expire each month, meaning the fund must regularly “roll” its holdings into the next month’s contract.

The recent surge in demand has pushed up the price of near-term bitcoin futures, and nudged it out of sync with the underlying cash market — creating a gap between the two prices that trades can profit on.

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