Everything you wanted to know about BTC futures but were afraid to ask!

[fillippone]

A few days ago PlanB made the following statement.

Hello
How can we apply your strategy to futures on Bitmex? Because I can't trade on Bakkt.
Why futures of March are above spot price and other futures?

I don’t know the term structure on Bitmex, but the strategy is viable when there is a contango in future prices (the other way round when there is a backwardstion).
So, yes, as long as your cost of carry doesn’t erase the positive price differential, yes you can trade that.

Why are the prices so steep?
I still have no clue. Investigating this.

[crazy-joe]

A few days ago PlanB made the following statement.

Hello
How can we apply your strategy to futures on Bitmex? Because I can't trade on Bakkt.
Why futures of March are above spot price and other futures?

I don’t know the term structure on Bitmex, but the strategy is viable when there is a contango in future prices (the other way round when there is a backwardstion).
So, yes, as long as your cost of carry doesn’t erase the positive price differential, yes you can trade that.

Why are the prices so steep?
I still have no clue. Investigating this.

You're using which platform to trade futures please? Which platforms do you recommend?
I can't use Bakkt, and I think most of people can't here, so we can't apply your strategy if you don't give us a platform available to us.

[Last of the V8s]

You're using which platform to trade futures please? Which platforms do you recommend?
I can't use Bakkt, and I think most of people can't here, so we can't apply your strategy if you don't give us a platform available to us.

You absolutely must do your own research if you're going to trade futures. Bitfinex, Bitmex, Deribit and Bybit are popular right now. Okcoin and Bitflyer for price signals, you'd have trouble signing up. But they are all crooks essentially. Also, use a vpn.

[crazy-joe]

You're using which platform to trade futures please? Which platforms do you recommend?
I can't use Bakkt, and I think most of people can't here, so we can't apply your strategy if you don't give us a platform available to us.

You absolutely must do your own research if you're going to trade futures. Bitfinex, Bitmex, Deribit and Bybit are popular right now. Okcoin and Bitflyer for price signals, you'd have trouble signing up. But they are all crooks essentially. Also, use a vpn.

Hello thank you for your reply but I don't want to just trade futures, I already Mex. I want to apply his strategy, he says we can profit from the situation, but I would know how to do it while I can't trade on Bakkt and nobody here. So I was asking him where I can apply his strategy. Thank you.

A few days ago PlanB made the following statement.

Verification of what I said before: #bitcoin cash & carry (spot buying btc and simultaneously future selling for delivery in 1-6 months) will net you 7-10% annualized return .. almost risk free.
@stephanlivera
 and I talk about this in the podcast that will be out later today.

Cash & carry strategies can return up to 10% annualised

➡️ Live curve on http://skew.com

Disclaimer: Not investment advice

https://twitter.com/100trillionUSD/status/1191293123298832386?s=20


What does it means?
Is it really possible to profit from this situation?

[fillippone]

uHello thank you for your reply but I don't want to just trade futures, I already Mex. I want to apply his strategy, he says we can profit from the situation, but I would know how to do it while I can't trade on Bakkt and nobody here. So I was asking him where I can apply his strategy. Thank you.

This is not MY strategy. This strategy has been used since future has been traded on the markets.
DYOR before using real money on this if you are not sure on how these instruments work.

[crazy-joe]

uHello thank you for your reply but I don't want to just trade futures, I already Mex. I want to apply his strategy, he says we can profit from the situation, but I would know how to do it while I can't trade on Bakkt and nobody here. So I was asking him where I can apply his strategy. Thank you.

This is not MY strategy. This strategy has been used since future has been traded on the markets.
DYOR before using real money on this if you are not sure on how these instruments work.

Yes I want to DYOR but could you give me some links for that?
Which platform do you recommend? On which platform are you trading? Do you know some platforms where I can apply this strategy?
Is there a way to apply the strategy on bitmex futures?
Thank you

[JayJuanGee]

uHello thank you for your reply but I don't want to just trade futures, I already Mex. I want to apply his strategy, he says we can profit from the situation, but I would know how to do it while I can't trade on Bakkt and nobody here. So I was asking him where I can apply his strategy. Thank you.

This is not MY strategy. This strategy has been used since future has been traded on the markets.
DYOR before using real money on this if you are not sure on how these instruments work.

Yes I want to DYOR but could you give me some links for that?
Which platform do you recommend? On which platform are you trading? Do you know some platforms where I can apply this strategy?
Is there a way to apply the strategy on bitmex futures?
Thank you

Sounds to me that you are looking to lose money, get scammed or to gamble for the mere sake of it.

When members are repeatedly suggesting that you do some research, they are trying to be nice to you, which really means that you need to look around more and maybe even practice more, which also might mean to look more closely at yourself too, including how you are playing your own finances as well as how much of yourself you are planning to invest into something that you admittedly do not know but seemed rush to learn the nuts and bolts.

Many times when guys (and perhaps a gal or two) are able to make decent money in trading BTC (and the use of other financial instruments), they might suggest to you that it is easy, but the good ones will have spent a considerable amount of time practicing such trade (hopefully with low amounts) and building their own expertise, which would then involve adding more sophisticated and complicated financial instruments after having had really gotten used to the more simple instruments.

You usually will not make more money by merely employing more complicated trading instruments, unless you already know the simple instruments well and really study and practice on a personal level with those more complicated instruments (and you likely do not need to be an expert when you start because you can learn as you go, with small amounts), because the more complicated the instrument are designed to be in favor of the house, and you have to know the instrument so well that you can overcome the ways that the instruments are designed to be in favor of the house in order to be able to make money or to make a killing from such instrument(s).

By the way, I am continuously surprised regarding how many folks (members) that I run into in this space who seem to be so unsatisfied with the simple investing methods with BTC that is likely going to make a lot of people a lot of money, just as it has in the past, but there are so many people who want to accelerate such money making process by 10x or more and therefore end up missing up on the considerable great opportunities that are available with relatively straight forward BTC investing strategies involving, buying, accumulating and holding.... and if you get the BTC part down (without getting sucked into get rich quick schemes), then maybe you can take 10% of that value and start to play with other more complicated financial instruments that involve hedges: such as leverage, margins, options and/or futures.. which also can sound like investing in an alt when BTC is risky enough and already with a lot of upside potential.

[crazy-joe]

Sounds to me that you are looking to lose money, get scammed or to gamble for the mere sake of it.

When members are repeatedly suggesting that you do some research, they are trying to be nice to you, which really means that you need to look around more and maybe even practice more, which also might mean to look more closely at yourself too, including how you are playing your own finances as well as how much of yourself you are planning to invest into something that you admittedly do not know but seemed rush to learn the nuts and bolts.

Many times when guys (and perhaps a gal or two) are able to make decent money in trading BTC (and the use of other financial instruments), they might suggest to you that it is easy, but the good ones will have spent a considerable amount of time practicing such trade (hopefully with low amounts) and building their own expertise, which would then involve adding more sophisticated and complicated financial instruments after having had really gotten used to the more simple instruments.

You usually will not make more money by merely employing more complicated trading instruments, unless you already know the simple instruments well and really study and practice on a personal level with those more complicated instruments (and you likely do not need to be an expert when you start because you can learn as you go, with small amounts), because the more complicated the instrument are designed to be in favor of the house, and you have to know the instrument so well that you can overcome the ways that the instruments are designed to be in favor of the house in order to be able to make money or to make a killing from such instrument(s).

By the way, I am continuously surprised regarding how many folks (members) that I run into in this space who seem to be so unsatisfied with the simple investing methods with BTC that is likely going to make a lot of people a lot of money, just as it has in the past, but there are so many people who want to accelerate such money making process by 10x or more and therefore end up missing up on the considerable great opportunities that are available with relatively straight forward BTC investing strategies involving, buying, accumulating and holding.... and if you get the BTC part down (without getting sucked into get rich quick schemes), then maybe you can take 10% of that value and start to play with other more complicated financial instruments that involve hedges: such as leverage, margins, options and/or futures.. which also can sound like investing in an alt when BTC is risky enough and already with a lot of upside potential.

Hello thank you very much for your long reply Sir. I don't want to risk my money that's why I want to apply this strategy. He says it's a totally safe strategy, it's an arbitrage.
I want to do this arbitrage but he doesn't say on which platform we can do it. I can't trade on Bakkt and nobody can trade on it here. It's very frustrating to tell people they can do a big arbitrage and then to not tell where they can do it.

So the idea is to profit from this situation selling a future, while at the same time buying a bitcoin on the spot market, to be held it until future expiry.
In this way at the expiry you will have a bitcoin to be sold to your conterpart. Having bought the bitcoin at a lower price, you are actualy locking in the price difference you executed your trades.

This is a market neutral strategy: you are not exposed to market risks, bitcoin can go up to 30,000 USD or crash to 1,000 SUD and your profit will stay the same, as you are buying and selling a bitcoin at the same time.

[JayJuanGee]

Sounds to me that you are looking to lose money, get scammed or to gamble for the mere sake of it.

When members are repeatedly suggesting that you do some research, they are trying to be nice to you, which really means that you need to look around more and maybe even practice more, which also might mean to look more closely at yourself too, including how you are playing your own finances as well as how much of yourself you are planning to invest into something that you admittedly do not know but seemed rush to learn the nuts and bolts.

Many times when guys (and perhaps a gal or two) are able to make decent money in trading BTC (and the use of other financial instruments), they might suggest to you that it is easy, but the good ones will have spent a considerable amount of time practicing such trade (hopefully with low amounts) and building their own expertise, which would then involve adding more sophisticated and complicated financial instruments after having had really gotten used to the more simple instruments.

You usually will not make more money by merely employing more complicated trading instruments, unless you already know the simple instruments well and really study and practice on a personal level with those more complicated instruments (and you likely do not need to be an expert when you start because you can learn as you go, with small amounts), because the more complicated the instrument are designed to be in favor of the house, and you have to know the instrument so well that you can overcome the ways that the instruments are designed to be in favor of the house in order to be able to make money or to make a killing from such instrument(s).

By the way, I am continuously surprised regarding how many folks (members) that I run into in this space who seem to be so unsatisfied with the simple investing methods with BTC that is likely going to make a lot of people a lot of money, just as it has in the past, but there are so many people who want to accelerate such money making process by 10x or more and therefore end up missing up on the considerable great opportunities that are available with relatively straight forward BTC investing strategies involving, buying, accumulating and holding.... and if you get the BTC part down (without getting sucked into get rich quick schemes), then maybe you can take 10% of that value and start to play with other more complicated financial instruments that involve hedges: such as leverage, margins, options and/or futures.. which also can sound like investing in an alt when BTC is risky enough and already with a lot of upside potential.

Hello thank you very much for your long reply Sir. I don't want to risk my money that's why I want to apply this strategy. He says it's a totally safe strategy, it's an arbitrage.
I want to do this arbitrage but he doesn't say on which platform we can do it. I can't trade on Bakkt and nobody can trade on it here. It's very frustrating to tell people they can do a big arbitrage and then to not tell where they can do it.

So the idea is to profit from this situation selling a future, while at the same time buying a bitcoin on the spot market, to be held it until future expiry.
In this way at the expiry you will have a bitcoin to be sold to your conterpart. Having bought the bitcoin at a lower price, you are actualy locking in the price difference you executed your trades.

This is a market neutral strategy: you are not exposed to market risks, bitcoin can go up to 30,000 USD or crash to 1,000 SUD and your profit will stay the same, as you are buying and selling a bitcoin at the same time.

I agree that if someone is saying that some arbitrage trade can be done, and if there is instant profits then it should be clarified how that can be accomplished  because sometimes arbitrage opportunities might look easy in theory but much more difficult to carry out in practice

[Hueristic]

Sounds to me that you are looking to lose money, get scammed or to gamble for the mere sake of it.

When members are repeatedly suggesting that you do some research, they are trying to be nice to you, which really means that you need to look around more and maybe even practice more, which also might mean to look more closely at yourself too, including how you are playing your own finances as well as how much of yourself you are planning to invest into something that you admittedly do not know but seemed rush to learn the nuts and bolts.

Many times when guys (and perhaps a gal or two) are able to make decent money in trading BTC (and the use of other financial instruments), they might suggest to you that it is easy, but the good ones will have spent a considerable amount of time practicing such trade (hopefully with low amounts) and building their own expertise, which would then involve adding more sophisticated and complicated financial instruments after having had really gotten used to the more simple instruments.

You usually will not make more money by merely employing more complicated trading instruments, unless you already know the simple instruments well and really study and practice on a personal level with those more complicated instruments (and you likely do not need to be an expert when you start because you can learn as you go, with small amounts), because the more complicated the instrument are designed to be in favor of the house, and you have to know the instrument so well that you can overcome the ways that the instruments are designed to be in favor of the house in order to be able to make money or to make a killing from such instrument(s).

By the way, I am continuously surprised regarding how many folks (members) that I run into in this space who seem to be so unsatisfied with the simple investing methods with BTC that is likely going to make a lot of people a lot of money, just as it has in the past, but there are so many people who want to accelerate such money making process by 10x or more and therefore end up missing up on the considerable great opportunities that are available with relatively straight forward BTC investing strategies involving, buying, accumulating and holding.... and if you get the BTC part down (without getting sucked into get rich quick schemes), then maybe you can take 10% of that value and start to play with other more complicated financial instruments that involve hedges: such as leverage, margins, options and/or futures.. which also can sound like investing in an alt when BTC is risky enough and already with a lot of upside potential.

Hello thank you very much for your long reply Sir. I don't want to risk my money that's why I want to apply this strategy. He says it's a totally safe strategy, it's an arbitrage.
I want to do this arbitrage but he doesn't say on which platform we can do it. I can't trade on Bakkt and nobody can trade on it here. It's very frustrating to tell people they can do a big arbitrage and then to not tell where they can do it.

So the idea is to profit from this situation selling a future, while at the same time buying a bitcoin on the spot market, to be held it until future expiry.
In this way at the expiry you will have a bitcoin to be sold to your conterpart. Having bought the bitcoin at a lower price, you are actualy locking in the price difference you executed your trades.

This is a market neutral strategy: you are not exposed to market risks, bitcoin can go up to 30,000 USD or crash to 1,000 SUD and your profit will stay the same, as you are buying and selling a bitcoin at the same time.

The definition of arbitrage alone gives you your answer so that may be why people are not telling you a step by way step method for doing it. By definition if you cannot use an exchange that you are trying to arb from then you simply cannot use that method. The answer to your question is inherent in your question. And that is why JJG is telling you politly that you have no clue what your doing.

And that is why you have been told to DYOR, luckily for you I am not such a polite guy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrage

[crazy-joe]

Sounds to me that you are looking to lose money, get scammed or to gamble for the mere sake of it.

When members are repeatedly suggesting that you do some research, they are trying to be nice to you, which really means that you need to look around more and maybe even practice more, which also might mean to look more closely at yourself too, including how you are playing your own finances as well as how much of yourself you are planning to invest into something that you admittedly do not know but seemed rush to learn the nuts and bolts.

Many times when guys (and perhaps a gal or two) are able to make decent money in trading BTC (and the use of other financial instruments), they might suggest to you that it is easy, but the good ones will have spent a considerable amount of time practicing such trade (hopefully with low amounts) and building their own expertise, which would then involve adding more sophisticated and complicated financial instruments after having had really gotten used to the more simple instruments.

You usually will not make more money by merely employing more complicated trading instruments, unless you already know the simple instruments well and really study and practice on a personal level with those more complicated instruments (and you likely do not need to be an expert when you start because you can learn as you go, with small amounts), because the more complicated the instrument are designed to be in favor of the house, and you have to know the instrument so well that you can overcome the ways that the instruments are designed to be in favor of the house in order to be able to make money or to make a killing from such instrument(s).

By the way, I am continuously surprised regarding how many folks (members) that I run into in this space who seem to be so unsatisfied with the simple investing methods with BTC that is likely going to make a lot of people a lot of money, just as it has in the past, but there are so many people who want to accelerate such money making process by 10x or more and therefore end up missing up on the considerable great opportunities that are available with relatively straight forward BTC investing strategies involving, buying, accumulating and holding.... and if you get the BTC part down (without getting sucked into get rich quick schemes), then maybe you can take 10% of that value and start to play with other more complicated financial instruments that involve hedges: such as leverage, margins, options and/or futures.. which also can sound like investing in an alt when BTC is risky enough and already with a lot of upside potential.

Hello thank you very much for your long reply Sir. I don't want to risk my money that's why I want to apply this strategy. He says it's a totally safe strategy, it's an arbitrage.
I want to do this arbitrage but he doesn't say on which platform we can do it. I can't trade on Bakkt and nobody can trade on it here. It's very frustrating to tell people they can do a big arbitrage and then to not tell where they can do it.

So the idea is to profit from this situation selling a future, while at the same time buying a bitcoin on the spot market, to be held it until future expiry.
In this way at the expiry you will have a bitcoin to be sold to your conterpart. Having bought the bitcoin at a lower price, you are actualy locking in the price difference you executed your trades.

This is a market neutral strategy: you are not exposed to market risks, bitcoin can go up to 30,000 USD or crash to 1,000 SUD and your profit will stay the same, as you are buying and selling a bitcoin at the same time.

The definition of arbitrage alone gives you your answer so that may be why people are not telling you a step by way step method for doing it. By definition if you cannot use an exchange that you are trying to arb from then you simply cannot use that method. The answer to your question is inherent in your question. And that is why JJG is telling you politly that you have no clue what your doing.

And that is why you have been told to DYOR, luckily for you I am not such a polite guy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrage

Thank you very much for your link Sir it's very interesting but I wasn't asking for the meaning of arbitrage. I think you didn't understand very well what is the problem here. A strategy has been detailed by Fillippone, to safely earn money with futures. But unfortunately he chose Bakkt for his example and I can't trade on Bakkt like everybody here, so I'm asking which platform I can use to apply this futures strategy. Which exchange are you using to trade futures Sir? Is it possible to apply the strategy on this exchange? Thank you very much

[Greed Dev]

wow, this article is really impressive and it gave me a better understanding of Bakkt. I keep seeing people gossip about it but I don't really understand its mechanism.
Bakkt is a futures exchange exchange, one of the very popular derivative tools. but perhaps the bitcoin derivative tool is not really good for bitcoin due to too much manipulation and players are afraid to confront those who have a lot of money. Do you agree with me that is the reason Bakkt failed?

[Hueristic]

Thank you very much for your link Sir it's very interesting but I wasn't asking for the meaning of arbitrage. I think you didn't understand very well what is the problem here. A strategy has been detailed by Fillippone, to safely earn money with futures. But unfortunately he chose Bakkt for his example and I can't trade on Bakkt like everybody here, so I'm asking which platform I can use to apply this futures strategy. Which exchange are you using to trade futures Sir? Is it possible to apply the strategy on this exchange? Thank you very much

OK, lets say that I can buy a tv for 100 dollars and also sell it for 110 dollars back to walmart(only) but that transaction would not be settled until a future date. Then that would be an arb on the tv. But lets say i could not goto walmart(for whatever reason)  then I would not be able to actually sell that item would I?

Did that make your conundrum clearer?

[JayJuanGee]

Sounds to me that you are looking to lose money, get scammed or to gamble for the mere sake of it.

When members are repeatedly suggesting that you do some research, they are trying to be nice to you, which really means that you need to look around more and maybe even practice more, which also might mean to look more closely at yourself too, including how you are playing your own finances as well as how much of yourself you are planning to invest into something that you admittedly do not know but seemed rush to learn the nuts and bolts.

Many times when guys (and perhaps a gal or two) are able to make decent money in trading BTC (and the use of other financial instruments), they might suggest to you that it is easy, but the good ones will have spent a considerable amount of time practicing such trade (hopefully with low amounts) and building their own expertise, which would then involve adding more sophisticated and complicated financial instruments after having had really gotten used to the more simple instruments.

You usually will not make more money by merely employing more complicated trading instruments, unless you already know the simple instruments well and really study and practice on a personal level with those more complicated instruments (and you likely do not need to be an expert when you start because you can learn as you go, with small amounts), because the more complicated the instrument are designed to be in favor of the house, and you have to know the instrument so well that you can overcome the ways that the instruments are designed to be in favor of the house in order to be able to make money or to make a killing from such instrument(s).

By the way, I am continuously surprised regarding how many folks (members) that I run into in this space who seem to be so unsatisfied with the simple investing methods with BTC that is likely going to make a lot of people a lot of money, just as it has in the past, but there are so many people who want to accelerate such money making process by 10x or more and therefore end up missing up on the considerable great opportunities that are available with relatively straight forward BTC investing strategies involving, buying, accumulating and holding.... and if you get the BTC part down (without getting sucked into get rich quick schemes), then maybe you can take 10% of that value and start to play with other more complicated financial instruments that involve hedges: such as leverage, margins, options and/or futures.. which also can sound like investing in an alt when BTC is risky enough and already with a lot of upside potential.

Hello thank you very much for your long reply Sir. I don't want to risk my money that's why I want to apply this strategy. He says it's a totally safe strategy, it's an arbitrage.
I want to do this arbitrage but he doesn't say on which platform we can do it. I can't trade on Bakkt and nobody can trade on it here. It's very frustrating to tell people they can do a big arbitrage and then to not tell where they can do it.

So the idea is to profit from this situation selling a future, while at the same time buying a bitcoin on the spot market, to be held it until future expiry.
In this way at the expiry you will have a bitcoin to be sold to your conterpart. Having bought the bitcoin at a lower price, you are actualy locking in the price difference you executed your trades.

This is a market neutral strategy: you are not exposed to market risks, bitcoin can go up to 30,000 USD or crash to 1,000 SUD and your profit will stay the same, as you are buying and selling a bitcoin at the same time.

I agree that if someone is saying that some arbitrage trade can be done, and if there is instant profits then it should be clarified how that can be accomplished  because sometimes arbitrage opportunities might look easy in theory but much more difficult to carry out in practice

I hate to quote myself, but Hueristic's attempt to explain to you, crazy-joe, by use of a dictionary definition, caused me to look at the portion of fillippone's response that you quoted.  The answer is right in the quote.  He is saying that there is a price difference in one location (on the future's market) and the spot price, which means immediate profits if you have money and ability to simultaneously buy at both locations.  That means that you need an account to be able to do both at once and find some kind of advantage in such a direct and immediate profit(s).

Hey, I used to play around with arbitrage opportunities, and I would be able to do it once or twice, and still feel comfortable, but if I kept trying to make the same arbitrage profitable trade, one of my accounts would get over balanced with either too much fiat or too much BTC.  Yes, I was profitable, but my over balance in one direction or another would make me feel that it was not worth the profits that I was making, and there tended to be a reason that I could engage in such immediate profits, and that was because one of the trades was more liquid than the other and that was the reason that the price was so different that I could recognize an ability to immediately profit in place in which I already had the ability to do so.

So, likely I am getting back to just agreeing with myself and my initial response to you, which was that if you don't know what the fuck fillippone is talking about or you cannot recognize what he is saying, then you do not have enough experience or even know how to access the places for immediate profits.  You don't get to such a place for immediate profits or being able to weigh even if it is worth it for you to exercise such immediate profits unless you get yourself into various places in which you can engage in such trades, understand the basics of tradings and employing the various tools of trading.

You know the expression that defines luck as preparation meeting opportunity?  Well, preparation involves doing your own research and even setting up some systems in your own way of doing things that allows you to take advantage of the various opportunities, and surely with arbitrage opportunities, if they are real easy, they will not tend to last very long, so you already need to be in place, if you were to engage in such.  In other words, arbitrage opportunities move, but someone who is in the game and has prepared, will be able to take advantage of such opportunities, if that is what floats his/her boat.  Does not currently float my boat, because I find myself already rich and getting richer just from holding BTC and NOT playing around with it... so even arbitrage opportunities can include both risks and costs, including time spent and accounting tricks that might
not be worth it once you really weigh the whole situation by getting yourself into positions to understand.

TLDR:  DYOR, YMMV, BTFD, HODL craefully, etc   - hahahahaha.

[Saint-loup]

uHello thank you for your reply but I don't want to just trade futures, I already Mex. I want to apply his strategy, he says we can profit from the situation, but I would know how to do it while I can't trade on Bakkt and nobody here. So I was asking him where I can apply his strategy. Thank you.

This is not MY strategy. This strategy has been used since future has been traded on the markets.
DYOR before using real money on this if you are not sure on how these instruments work.

Yes I want to DYOR but could you give me some links for that?
Which platform do you recommend? On which platform are you trading? Do you know some platforms where I can apply this strategy?
Is there a way to apply the strategy on bitmex futures?
Thank you

No AFAIK you won't be able to do that on Bitmex neither on any futures exchange I know. BTC futures on bitmex aren't "vanilla", they are inverse futures like most of the BTC futures of the cryptoverse. That is to say you don't buy and sell btc futures contracts but USD futures contracts instead, and the calculations of your profits(PnL) are done on the inverse of the price.
It's not really easy to explain in layman terms but it's the same as betting on the USD price against BTC with satoshis, but the inversion is done for you.
The altcoin futures are generally vanilla but they are against btc, and they are not asset-settled like on Bakkt but cash-settled in btc. So you can't apply this method on them because you won't receive or send the assets at the expiry date but the value of those cryptos in btc at the spot market price of the day, instead. So for example, if the price of EOS is higher than your sale price(ie the entry price of your short position) you will lose money because you will virtually give the value of one EOS at the spot market price of the day and only receive the price of your sale.

[Murat]

Surely, I was not much aware of this issue at all, This is a good finding for this purpose and it will make sense clear that nothing is not an easy task for the future purpose within this blockchain system, it's really an appreciated task which has done and I also believe that Bakkt is not yet ready to take the challenges to the favor of Bitcoin, one of the main problems in this platform is the price volatility so Bakkt will not capable to do something regarding this issue, so thins will remain same and Bitcoin will gain more space within this system, I think until a set of regulation will be there, nothing will change in this system, so at least a policy should be established for the favor of this platform.

[shoreno]

thanks for explaining out . im one of those users who are confuse about those term " futures " i also thought that future means the status of bakt or btc in the future but after i read this thread im now aware and educated . its still funny when i remember some old threads on the past that ask if what is the future of btc and most of the answers that i read is they say that btc will have a good future and its price will reach up to 20k to 300k usd  ,  lol  .

[fillippone]

To anyone interested I posted a new thread, similar ot this one, about Bitcoin Options.

Everything you wanted to know about BTC options but were afraid to ask!

As I explained in the post, the subject is very wide, so I focused only on some aspects. Please let me know (commenting the other thread), if you are inteerested in some particular aspect I might have not well detailed.

[fillippone]

This thread has been translated in Russian by FontSeli

Bce, чтo вы xoтeли бы знaть o фьючepcax нa BTC

If you think this thread or any other of my threads is worth being translated in your onw local board, please do! I will be happy to provide assistance!

[bdivrik]

What is Bakkt? In my eyes, this is very painful. We waited months for this decision. We said corporate capital will enter the market. But it didn't. The biggest move in 2019 was Binance and IEOs. It's not popular anymore. Each institution can receive bitcoin in different ways.