1) On the perpetual swap contracts, Bitmex applies a funding rate 3 times a day, every 8 hours. This is an instantaneous transaction where at the strike of 04:00 GMT, 12:00 GMT and 20:00 GMT every day, the funding rate pertaining to the preceding 8 hours gets instantly swapped between the long and short position holders. A positive funding rate means the XBT swaps contract is, in general, trading at a premium and therefore longs will pay shorts, whereas a negative rate means the swap is trading at a discount so the shorts will compensate the longs. You can start focusing on the price action about an hour before the funding rate swap, and position yourself in favor of the receiving side when there is a strong funding bias to the either side.
In almost all cases you will either make a very safe profit on price moving in your favor right before the funding swap as most day traders and high frequency operators want to quickly offload their positions to reopen right after funding, and / or at the very least you will receive the sizable funding rate.  It’s a very high probability play for a multitude of reasons, especially during regular (not extremely volatile) market conditions.
​
2) The relationship between the futures and the swap products. When there is short pressure on Bitcoin, and a bearish trend has been established, the future will almost always dip even further than the perpetual swaps contract, trading at a greater discount. Conversely, when BTC has been confidently rallying and a bullish trend looks strong, the future this time will trade at a greater premium compared to the swap, overtaking it in the opposite direction.
Bearing in mind this greater volatility offered by the 3 and 6 months BTC futures contracts, and their clear tendency to overshoot, the astute trader should usually look to increase his futures position relative to the swap position whenever he is making a medium to long term contrarian move…
​
3) Signing up to Bitmex with our reference below and then copying or being inspired by our proprietary trades at your convenience, which will not only grant you a standard 10% reduction on all trading fees, but also we will share with each of our referrals our in house weekly bitcoin trading positions, every week, after you send us simply a screenshot of your Bitmex invite page (so that we can keep track of our referral recipients):
https://www.bitmex.com/register/x3PcaI