Perpetual Futures

ETH Perpetual vs Spot for Covered Calls: What Funding Really Costs

A covered call is usually described as one of the simplest options structures: Own the underlying asset and sell a call against it.

In crypto markets, however, there is another way to create broadly similar directional exposure. Instead of holding ETH spot, a trader can hold a long ETH perpetual futures position and sell an ETH call against that exposure.

That raises an important question: If the call may remain open for months, is it better to hold ETH spot or keep the long perpetual?

At TerraMatris, this is not just a theoretical question. We have been managing an…