Jan 6, 2025: Our weekly Institutional Insights explores the latest market developments — market performance, industry news, exchange-traded fund (ETF) flows, trending topics, upcoming events and token unlocks — to help you supercharge your crypto trading.

Weekly Highlight — Markets Snap Five-Day Loss Streak 

Investors are now seizing the opportunity to buy the dip in U.S. stocks after a five-day decline that erased over $1 trillion in market value. Wall Street has broken its longest losing streak since April, with the Nasdaq-100 rebounding 1.7% and the S&P 500 rising 1.3% on Friday, January 3. These gains slightly offset the week's sell-off, which had continued into the new year following a tough December.

Despite concerns about slowing earnings growth among tech giants like the Magnificent Seven, traders remain optimistic, especially regarding AI leader NVIDIA Corporation. The market believes that, as long as retail investors keep investing in AI, the associated stock market boom is expected to persist. 

Stocks reached their session highs in the afternoon after Mike Johnson was reelected as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, indicating potential support for a business-friendly agenda. Meanwhile, bond yields rose, with the 10-year hitting 4.6% following comments from Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin about maintaining restrictive rates. U.S. manufacturing showed modest growth, with new orders at their highest since early last year, while investors assessed economic strength against the possibility of slower interest-rate cuts.

Weekly Crypto Highlight — AI Agent Spring Coming

Many investors are eagerly anticipating an Alt Season, a period when altcoins typically surge in value. However, current market dynamics suggest we may not see a widespread altcoin rally. The sheer number of tokens, combined with limited liquidity, has led to what's known as altcoin dispersion, making it crucial to select the right sectors and tokens.

, which are thriving even as the broader market declines. This nascent sector is experiencing rapid advancements, and its associated tokens face less pressure from venture capital unlocks. Many of its top protocols lack centralized exchange listings, indicating more buyers may enter the market.

Those investors who missed previous opportunities, such as the DeFi summer of 2020 and the Alt Layer 1 trade, now have another chance. Instead of targeting individual AI agents, the best risk/reward strategy lies in investing in infrastructure plays, which serve as the foundational tools for the sector.

The leading AI agent player is Virtuals Protocol, a platform for launching tokenized AI agents on the Base network. By purchasing tokens like Luna by Virtuals (LUNA) and VaderAI (VADER), users gain governance rights over specific agents, which allows them to both influence development and share in profits. 

Recently, daily protocol fee revenues dropped significantly in mid-December 2024 as activity slowed for the holidays. However, speculation around agent-associated tokens surged as the new year approached. Currently, Virtuals Protocol generates over $1 million in daily fees, though this is 50% less than figures for early December. Despite these challenges, the VIRTUAL token has more than doubled in value, reaching a market capitalization of $4.6 billion.

Other highlighted opportunities include Zerebro, which is pivoting to a full-stack framework for AI agents; ARC, with its Rust-based framework; and 

 (GRIFFAIN), a natural language on-chain search tool. These projects are well-positioned for future growth in the evolving landscape of AI technology.

 as we delve into leading AI agent tokens and the past week’s market movements. 

Advanced

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Weekly Institutional Insights: Market Snaps Five-Day Loss Streak; AI Agent Spring Coming

Our weekly crypto derivatives analytics report delves into macro events, the current state of crypto and trading signals from spot trading volume, and futures, options and perpetual contracts.

December's end-of-year options expiration brought an unexpected drop as realized volatility fell to the lowest levels of the month. Perpetual swap open interest remained stable, indicating these markets weren't heavily used for hedging against expired options, likely contributing to the muted volatility. 

While most expired open interest in Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) hasn't been reinvested, the balance of calls and puts remains consistent. Notably, ETH options are pricing in higher implied volatility as compared to BTC, particularly for shorter expirations, leading to a flat term structure for ETH, while BTC is offering cheaper options exposure.

In the perpetual markets, low volatility and minimal spot movements have led funding rates for nearly all tokens to mirror broader market sentiment throughout the holiday season. On the options side, BTC's term structure is noticeably lower and steeper than ETH's, with realized volatility now dipping below implied volatility levels, highlighting an intriguing shift in market dynamics.

Please check out the report’s highlights.

Open Interest Solid Amid Year-End Options Expiration

Although open interest for both BTC and ETH perpetual swaps hasn’t returned to early December 2024 highs, it remained robust throughout the significant end-of-year options expiration event. This suggests that these markets weren’t heavily utilized to 

 of the expiring options contracts, likely contributing to the lack of volatility observed during this period. Instead, trading volumes have dipped noticeably during the winter holiday season, coinciding with a collapse in realized volatility back to December 2024’s lowest levels.

BTC Option Curve Remains Steep During Call-Put Parity

The expiration of December's end-of-year options didn’t trigger the anticipated surge in volatility; instead, realized volatility has plummeted to the lower end of its recent range. The implied volatility term structure remains steep compared to both its recent behavior and ETH's, with longer-dated implied volatility around 57%, and 1-week at-the-money options trading about five points lower. Much of the expired open interest hasn’t yet been rolled into new positions, maintaining a neutral balance between puts and calls. Consequently, BTC's options market positioning is relatively neutral, lacking the leverage it had at the start of December 2024.

Huge ETH Option Expiring Doesn’t Cause Volatility

A late December spike in realized volatility didn’t carry into the new year, with ETH’s spot price currently exhibiting volatility below that of short-tenor implied volatility. Interestingly, the implied volatility term structure has undergone a steepening and re-flattening over the past week, contrasting with BTC’s slightly steeper profile. This suggests that ETH’s options market is anticipating higher short-term volatility in spot price movements. 

Despite the significant expiration of options open interest at the end of December 2024, which didn’t lead to a rollover into later expirations, call options continue to dominate the market and have increased at the start of 2025.

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Bybit X Block Scholes Crypto Derivatives Analytics Report (Jan 2, 2025): BTC Options Continue to See Call-Put Parity, With Lower Short-Term Volatility Expected

Dive into FLock, a decentralized platform that revolutionizes the way AI models are developed, trained and deployed.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to transform countless industries, but its development often raises questions about privacy, control and inclusivity. 

 is a unique decentralized platform that democratizes AI training, fine-tuning and inferencing. With its blockchain-powered infrastructure, FLock ensures transparency, security and community-driven decision-making, paving the way for AI models that align with established societal values. 

In this article, we’ll explore how FLock decentralizes AI training, its key features and its potential impact on developers, communities and users.

 platform that revolutionizes the way AI models are developed, trained and deployed. By leveraging blockchain technology and a novel approach called 

, FLock addresses critical issues in AI development, such as centralized control, lack of transparency and privacy concerns.

At its core, FLock’s mission is to democratize AI by enabling communities to participate directly in the creation and refinement of AI models. Through federated learning, FLock trains AI models across multiple decentralized devices or servers. This method ensures that data remains local, eliminating the need for raw data exchange while still enabling robust model training. By decentralizing the training process, FLock not only protects individual privacy, but also fosters a more inclusive ecosystem in which diverse contributors can collaborate.

What sets FLock apart is its integration of 

. This ensures that all contributions — whether data, compute power or feedback — are transparently recorded and fairly rewarded. Blockchain tech’s immutable ledger enhances trust among participants and safeguards the process against manipulation. Additionally, the platform’s on-chain incentive mechanisms encourage participation from a wide range of contributors, ensuring that rewards are distributed equitably.

Ultimately, FLock empowers communities to develop bespoke AI models tailored to their specific needs. By decentralizing the process and prioritizing transparency and collaboration, FLock breaks the monopoly of large corporations, creating an AI ecosystem that aligns with public ethics and societal values.

, an Oxford alumnus with a robust background in AI and blockchain technology. Sun, who serves as FLock's CEO, has an impressive career trajectory, having worked as the Director of AI for the Royal Bank of Canada and as an AI Research Fellow at Imperial College London. His vision for FLock stems from a deep understanding of both the technical and ethical challenges of AI development.

The founding team also includes other Oxford alumni, boasting over a decade of combined experience in AI research and the cryptocurrency industry. This team brings a collective blend of academic excellence and practical expertise that positions FLock to lead the decentralized AI movement.

FLock has successfully raised $11 million in funding across two rounds, reflecting strong investor confidence in its vision. In May 2024, FLock secured a $6 million seed round co-led by Lightspeed Faction and Tagus Capital, with additional backing from Digital Currency Group (DCG), Volt Capital, OKX Ventures and Inception Capital.

Later, in December 2024, FLock announced a $3 million successful funding round led by DCG and joined by prominent names like Animoca Brands, Fenbushi Capital, GnosisVC and GSR. These investments are being channelled into enhancing the platform’s testnet and federated learning client, accelerating FLock’s mission of enabling secure, collaborative AI development.

With this funding and over 1,500 nodes contributing from platforms like Numerai and Kaggle, FLock is rapidly scaling its impact on decentralized AI training.

FLock AI revolutionizes AI development through its decentralized training framework. This approach allows participants to contribute to AI model training without ever sharing their personal data. Instead, models are trained locally across devices using federated learning, which ensures that data remains with its owners while still enhancing the accuracy of the model overall. 

FLock’s reward system is designed to incentivize active participation. Contributors who provide data, computational power and/or feedback are compensated with FLOCK tokens, ensuring a fair distribution of rewards. 

FLock empowers its community through a robust governance framework. Decisions regarding AI model development, deployment and ethical considerations are driven by the community, ensuring alignment with established societal values. Through blockchain-based voting mechanisms, contributors can influence the direction of AI projects, fostering transparency and public accountability. 

FLock’s modular architecture allows contributors to participate in specific aspects of AI model development. Whether providing raw data or computational power or even refining algorithms, the platform enables a collaborative and scalable development process. 

At the core of FLock’s philosophy is its commitment to privacy and security. By leveraging blockchain technology, the platform ensures that no single entity controls the AI development process. Data remains local and protected by cryptographic measures, while the immutability of blockchain guarantees transparency in every transaction and model update. 

 begins with a blockchain and an AI layer.

The blockchain layer underpins FLock’s incentivization and security mechanisms.

The AI layer facilitates model training, refinement and deployment, leveraging both centralized and federated approaches.

Let’s have a look at the supply and demand for the FLOCK token.

FLock adopts a 1:2 ratio model between team/investors (33.3%) and community (66.7%), prioritizing community-driven growth and ecosystem expansion. The majority of tokens are allocated to incentivize user participation and long-term ecosystem success.

FLock aims to improve the future of AI development by decentralizing the training process and ensuring transparency, privacy and inclusivity. By leveraging blockchain and federated learning, FLock empowers communities to contribute to AI creation without compromising on privacy. Its innovative reward system and community-driven governance foster a fair and collaborative ecosystem. 

With significant backing and a growing network of contributors, FLock is positioning itself as a leader in decentralized AI, offering a more ethical and secure alternative to traditional AI development models. As it continues to scale, FLock is set to transform the way AI models are built and deployed.

 — and earn a share of a 10 million FLOCK prize pool. For more details, visit 

Intermediate

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FLock AI: Decentralized AI Training

In this tutorial, we’ll explore how you can complete a series of tasks in Network3 for Bybit Web3 Airdrop Arcade.

Task 1: Register for a Network3 Account and Connect Your Bybit Wallet 

: Navigate to the campaign page and click on the 

task. Click on the task, and Galxe will ask to redirect you to the Network3 register page.

: Register for a Network3 account using your email address. You may indicate a 

Task 2: Download the Network3 App and Run a Node for One Hour

 and choose your operating system to download the Network3 app.

 or powerbutton, depending upon which operating system you’re using. For ease of reference, we’ve used macOS and iOS as examples below.

: Keep running the node until the timer reaches 

Beginner

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How to Complete Network3 Tasks for Bybit Web3 Airdrop Arcade

Altcoins

Crypto

Storj is an open-source enterprise-grade decentralized cloud storage platform that offers multi-layered encryption for maximum security.

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In today’s data-driven world, it’s important to keep your personal and work-related files close by for quick access. Traditional data storage options — i.e., hard drives — tend to be bulky and expensive, especially compared to online options. In response to an increasing need for convenient file storage, many mainstream cloud storage providers have stepped in to offer both free and paid storage services. 

 $371.4 billion in 2020, with Amazon Web Services (AWS) taking the lead at a 31% market share. 

However, as cloud storage is created to ease the sharing of data, its infrastructure makes it susceptible to data breach and hacking. Additionally, since central cloud providers hold complete control over the stored data, there have been increasing concerns over the intrusion into consumer privacy. 

A decentralized cloud platform called Storj has recently gained popularity for its ability to provide secure data storage without involving big corporations, cloud storage providers and other third parties. This article will help you understand how Storj works.

Storj is an open-source, enterprise-grade decentralized cloud storage platform that’s 

–compatible with end-to-end encryption.

 The company behind the Storj platform is Storj Labs Inc., founded in 2014 by Shawn Wilkinson, James Prestwich, Jim Lowry, John Quinn and Tome Boshevski. Storj is split into two parts, with the supply side referred to as Storj and the demand side called Storj DCS.

Storj is powered by a decentralized network of 16,000 anonymous storage nodes in over 100 countries, eliminating the need to trust cloud storage service providers with the task of protecting private data. Anyone can join to operate a node to help store bits of encrypted data in their node and be rewarded in STORJ tokens.

Storj DCS allows customers to upload their data for free, with a monthly storage charge of $4.00 per terabyte (TB), which can be paid in either fiat currency or STORJ tokens. Storj DCS automatically encrypts each file before separating the data and scattering them into the network of various individual hosts. As a result, the system enhances privacy as each node only gets a random fragment of the entire file, with decryption keys divided among each node and the host. 

This decentralized file distribution also helps improve download speed, since data can be downloaded in parallel. Additionally, the system eliminates the risk of storing data in a few isolated storage units that may be susceptible to a planned and coordinated attack, resulting in mass data loss. 

In February 2023, Storj DCS was upgraded with 

 compatibility, enabling users to interact with 

How Can Storj Help With Data Storage and Sharing?

Storj’s decentralized file distribution provides several solutions for companies and individuals dealing with data. 

The Storj network gives users convenient and secure access to backups at a low cost. Videos can be downloaded and shared securely at fast speeds all across the world, with costs reduced by around 80%. 

In addition, the cost of storing data on a blockchain is lowered substantially with the aid of Storj, thereby facilitating DApp development and the advancement of 

. Lastly, as AI technology continues to grow, demand for data storage will increase as well. Storj can address this need by accommodating the storage requirements of increasingly complex AI models. 

Three main components contribute to the functioning of the Storj network:

Through this process, files are compressed, encrypted, and then shredded or split into 80+ bits and pieces.

The pieces of the original files are subsequently scattered and stored across the network. If a user wants to decrypt and retrieve their files, they must provide the same private key used during the initial compression and encryption process.

If a segment is small enough, it will most likely be stored within a Satellite rather than on a storage node.

Storj offers the concept of redundancy to account for 

 going offline and potentially losing a piece of data. In this case, redundancy means that 

 are applied to the encrypted data segments, which assists in recovering deleted or corrupted data at minuscule disk space.

The most important thing to know about Storj is that it employs a fundamentally different method for storing your data than most other cloud storage services. Instead of uploading copies of your files to a handful of servers, Storj uses a fully decentralized file storage architecture. Following are some of the features of Storj that make it a viable storage platform.

Storj provides end-to-end encryption for all stored data, meaning clients possess control of their encryption keys. Additionally, 

 are used for data access, giving users complete control over their data management.

As mentioned, when a user uploads a file, Storj splits it into overlapping “pieces” and places each one on separate storage nodes across various countries. When a user wants to download or move their files, Storj only has to access 29 pieces of each file in order to reconstruct the whole file. Thus, it becomes virtually impossible to lose files that you’ve uploaded to Storj.

Storj’s decentralized storage system is designed to make your data more secure, thanks to its zero-trust architecture that splits up files and stores them in different computers, so there’s no single point of failure. Additionally, all file pieces are encrypted on Storj’s servers and can’t be cracked without your 

When users want to access their files, the platform automatically downloads pieces of the files from the servers closest to their location. With over 16,000 servers (or storage nodes) spread across a global network, Storj can reach the pieces quickly, speeding up downloads. This high-speed access is particularly valuable for file sharing — users who need to share large files with a globally-distributed team.

, used primarily for payment within the Storj network. Users pay in STORJ for storage space and bandwidth. The tokens are then rewarded to Storj node operators for contributing to the network, and also used for transactions between Satellite operators. 

STORJ has a market cap of $55.29 million, with a total supply of 

. The total supply of STORJ consists of circulating tokens, and tokens in 

When the Storj network switched from the 

, its 2017 token sale created an initial circulating supply of 75.1 million. 

Storj had a circulating supply of 124 million in 2018, distributed as follows:

Its total supply in 2018 included the 124 million circulating supply, 245 million STORJ tokens in timelocked reserves and 56 million in non-timelocked reserves. 

By the end of Q2 2023, 20.5 million STORJ were in non-timelocked reserves, 91.9 million in timelocked reserves and 312.6 million in circulation.

You can buy STORJ as a USDT Perpetual contract on Bybit (

 to create an account and fund it with USDT. To open a position, click on the 

denominates the order in OCEAN tokens, while

denominates it in USDT). In addition, you can increase or decrease the margin mode of the position depending upon your risk appetite.

After aggregating STORJ price predictions from a range of analysts, the consensus reached is that STORJ will see a bullish trend in the years ahead.

 will close out at $0.83 by the end of 2025 and reach a maximum of $5.15 by 2030. Meanwhile, Digital Coin Price 

 $1.43 in 2025 and increase to $4.16 in 2030.

That said, all investments are subject to market risks, particularly in the volatile crypto space. Investors are advised to monitor the price and performance of STORJ carefully before investing.

Unlike traditional cloud storage services, which store data in huge data centers, Storj operates on a decentralized cloud storage network of over 16,000 independent nodes all across the globe. One of Storj’s main attractions is that users can buy, sell and control their data independently, reclaiming a service currently provided only by corporate giants like Microsoft, Google and Amazon.

While there may be a plethora of decentralized cloud storage platforms, like 

, Storj stands out with its focus on privacy. Its multi-layered encryption process ensures truly secure storage for privacy-oriented users, eliminating concerns that a corporate entity might view their information and target them for ads. This important use case draws potential users to Storj and its cryptocurrency.

Additionally, its high speed and low cost due to decentralized distribution of files make it a great video storage solution. File-storing and file-sharing are cost-effective, allowing for global expansion of video cloud streaming and potentially transforming the video production and streaming industries.

Due to its unique network design and valuable features, Storj has secured itself a place in the world of data storage and cryptocurrency. With more users joining the decentralized revolution, it won’t be long before Storj becomes the go-to platform for storing and transferring data securely, and claims its place as the ultimate decentralized file storage solution.

Storj (STORJ): Decentralized Cloud Storage for Secure and Private Data

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards