Come to my attention that merge is not going to yield immediately the forked coins to eth spot holders. I am not following the details of this scheduled but those who carry such kind of trades need to be aware of what is going, possible changes or any nuances in way coins will be distributed.
Nonetheless. There will be a distribution unless merge is delayed etc.
The carry trade can and will go on as long as needed. So is irrelevant if the distribution of "free coins" is later or ealier. Traders will be holding ETH and shorting futures as long as possible as way to remain delta neutral.
The stronger than usual ETH demand at the moment is strongly also influenced by the ongoing futures trade which offer a way for some type of opportunist traders not care about direction of price in following months while still waiting for the time those tokens are distributed.
Of course after all this settlement there will be other risks like which exchanges that allow to sell ETHpow coins and if both of coins will maintain any sort of parity, if there will be liquidity. IT IS NOT ALL ROSES.
This type of trade involves some other type of risk due to uncertainty of the future (ex merge postponed/canceled) like any other financial product on the market.
SO as in my video disclaimer.... my ideas, opinions, thoughts... are not financial advise.