TechFlow news, on December 4, according to CoinDesk, analyst James Van Straten said that since November 20, CME's open interest has decreased by nearly 30,000 contracts to 185,485. During the same period, net inflows into U.S. spot ETFs exceeded $3 billion. This unusual phenomenon suggests investors are shifting toward pure long strategies, rather than the previously dominant spot-futures arbitrage approach.
James Van Straten explained that since the launch of ETFs in January this year, institutional investors have primarily employed a spot-futures arbitrage strategy—holding long positions in ETFs while shorting futures to capture basis spread gains. Currently, the annualized basis for CME's three-month futures remains at a substantial 16%, significantly higher than both U.S. 10-year Treasury yields and Ethereum staking returns. However, investors now appear to prefer directly betting on rising Bitcoin prices through ETFs.
