To me, this indicates a gigantic "base" trade that is preventing btc from moving up: hedge funds are shorting spot and buying futures.
Who knows, maybe Blackrock is lending them btc to short..maybe Saylor does the same, but unlikely.
This would make little sense, as the futures are more expensive in normal conditions (contango, positive funding rate).
it depends:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/basis-trading.aspThe speculator who takes the opposite side of this trade will have purchased futures contracts for 25 cents per bushel higher than the spot price (the basis). If that speculator hedged their bet by selling contracts at the spot price ($4.00 per bushel), they would now have a position that is long the basis.
From the same source:
In futures trading using a basis trading strategy, an investor would either "long the basis" or "short the basis" depending on if the trader thinks the basis will increase or decrease.
The opposite side of the trade (short the basis, that is, short actual corn and long futures) means the speculator is expecting corn to go down. In a contango market, this is NOT a market neutral strategy. This isn't how smart money generally moves.
This is explained on the complementary page on the same site, documenting the negative basis trade:
The [negative basis, i.e., short corn, long futures] trade is usually done with bonds that are trading at par or at a discount
--snip--
When you short a credit default swap, this means you have bought protection much like an insurance premium. While this might seem counterintuitive, remember that buying protection means you have the right to sell the bond at par value to the seller of the protection in the event of default or another negative credit event. So, buying protection is equal to a short.
(My
emphasis and [clarification]).
In other words, there could be speculators who play the negative basis trade, but only as a form of protection (likely they are already long "basis", that is, physical btc), not for actual speculation. Actual speculation in a contango market (a market where futures are more expensive than the "real thing"), again, entails the normal (positive) basis trade.
well, maybe they expect backwardation soon.
the long and the short of it...some VERY large party has to be doing some shorting (not sure via which mechanism).
Otherwise, constant large buying and no price movement does not make sense.
My suspects are tether and blackrock.