Crypto-Derivatives Strategies

Overview

Covers three major crypto-derivatives strategy directions: perpetual funding-rate arbitrage, futures term-structure trading, and options strategies (volatility trading). The main exchanges are OKX and Deribit.

Perpetual Funding-Rate Arbitrage

Funding-Rate Mechanism

Perpetual contracts have no expiry and rely on the funding rate to anchor prices to spot:

Funding rate > 0: longs pay shorts (strong bullish sentiment)
Funding rate < 0: shorts pay longs (strong bearish sentiment)

Settlement frequency: OKX settles every 8 hours (00:00 / 08:00 / 16:00 UTC)
Annualized return = funding rate × 3 × 365