Recently, many traders have been increasing their long positions in silver contracts, but the fee pressures are quite significant. Behind this actually lies an arbitrage mechanism issue.

First, let's discuss the phenomenon. Silver contracts do not have a true spot counterpart; instead, they track the spot prices of several exchanges. Due to the insufficient liquidity of new contracts, combined with the 24-hour high-frequency trading and high-risk strategy participants in the crypto space, fee fluctuations are particularly intense. Not long ago, the fees remained consistently between 1,000 and 1,200—this indeed can drain the pockets of long traders.

However, there is an arbitrage opportunity here. Historically, the precious metals market has shown a clear positive forward spread (forward prices higher than spot), and related financial products have maintained positive interest rates over the long term. So, the counter-strategy would be—short silver and gold contracts while holding spot ETF products to lock in this spread.

What about the expected returns? Based on current data, under a neutral position, the annualized return for gold is around 9-10%, and for silver, it's 10-20%. If these two assets continue to perform strongly this year, the annualized return potential could be even greater.

In the long term, as the liquidity of on-chain precious metals products deepens, similar arbitrage opportunities will become more frequent. Large investors and institutions are already positioning themselves—this not only diversifies investment strategies but also offers relatively controlled risk with reasonable returns.