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.

Advanced

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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

Bybit launched the Bybit Merch Creative Challenge for university students worldwide, offering a $50,000 USDT prize pool.

The S&P 500 dropped 0.22% on Thursday, its fifth straight decline, with investors eyeing Friday’s economic updates. Coindesk Indices, an index measuring broader cryptocurrency market performance was up by 2.03%, with Bitcoin and Ether rising by 2.79% and 2.70%, respectively in the past 24 hours.

Today's top performer is XRP, which surged 1.9% following a rise in price driven by increased open interest and positive market sentiment.

Ripple (XRP), launched in August 2012, is a blockchain technology company focused on improving international payments with its cryptocurrency, XRP. XRP price surged due to increased open interest, a major XRP transfer, and market sentiment linked to Trump's inauguration. Bullish momentum is supported by high short liquidations, with key resistance levels to watch for further price movement.

Check Out the Latest Prices, Charts, and Data of 

 for university students worldwide, offering a $50,000 USDT prize pool. Participants can design exclusive Bybit merchandise, with submissions open until Jan. 15, 2025. Winners will be announced on Feb. 1, 2025, across four prize categories.

Yesterday, Bitcoin Spot ETFs recorded a total inflow of $84.8M, driven by $107.9M from non-GBTC funds, partially offset by a $23.1M outflow from GBTC.

, offering an airdrop for participants who complete tasks like swapping and bridging using the Mango wallet. Points earned through tasks determine airdrop rewards. Join via the Mango wallet and follow steps on the testnet dashboard.

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Bybit Launches $50,000 Merch Design Challenge for University Students Worldwide

Bybit Learn

Altcoins

Verge functions on an open-source decentralized network. It offers low transaction fees, extensive security measures and anonymous transactions. Read more here.

 has been the top cryptocurrency since its founding in early 2009, and has been designed with transparency in mind. However, many recognize that it is not a perfect platform, and some developers have devoted their time and energy to improving Bitcoin. Verge has specifically been created to provide everyday users with anonymous, secure transactions to address their everyday needs.

 to ensure the anonymity of its users. At the same time, Verge’s payment option is designed so that regular users can easily complete direct and private transactions that Verge supports by using 

™. With these key elements in place, the Verge team has created an option that’s well-suited for mass adoption, with the potential to bring crypto market transactions front and center for regular people and businesses. 

Verge was founded in 2014 as DogeCoinDark before being rebranded in 2016. The project’s founder, Justin Valo, developed the Verge network with a small volunteer and development team, with the goal of improving on the established 

. Verge is an open-source network that supports fast, secure and direct transactions for regular users. The Verge blockchain is supported by respected groups such as 

Verge provides its users with an accessible payment option, while its excellent combination of features supports 

 in a process that’s fast and easy. Rather than being operated by a private company, the Verge community and its developers remain in close contact to drive continued improvement and progressively enhance the user experience.

Verge uses Tor, developed by a nonprofit organization in 2006 as an internet privacy tool, to maintain user privacy of transactions. The Verge network utilizes numerous advanced features and mechanisms to simplify blockchain transactions while safeguarding users’ anonymity.

) cryptocurrency, Verge offers greater security than many other blockchains. Its mining principle utilizes five hash functions. The five mining algorithms it supports — BLAKE2s, Scrypt, Myr-Groestl, X17 and Lyra2REv2 — have a block target time of 30 seconds. In addition, the difficulty of the mining principle is only impacted by the 

Verge utilizes a dual-key stealth address protocol (

) for security measures and to protect the privacy of a transaction’s receiving party. Payers are required to create one-time IP addresses for individual transactions. Through these stealth transactions, each payment made to the same recipient is written on the blockchain as going to different IP addresses. Stealth addresses make it almost impossible for a recipient’s address to be linked to a specific transaction.

 may also be referred to as atomic cross-chain trades. The swaps support on-chain interoperability between Verge and other cryptos, with the requirement of a third-party intermediary. Atomic swaps allow for direct transactions by relying on a 

. This may also be referred to as Check Locktime Verify (

Rootstock is a unique aspect of Verge that allows for 

–like infrastructure to function on Bitcoin-based chains. It’s a pegged sidechain that works in conjunction with the 

 to support merged mining. This allows for time- and energy-efficient security and maintenance of the network.

Ring signatures and confidential transactions (known as RingCT) protect the privacy and anonymity of both parties in a stealth transaction. Due to these functions, the output from a sender is combined with other outputs to obscure the data. The recipient, sender, transaction amount and IP addresses are kept confidential. 

The Verge development team has created its network with several key integrations, each of which serves a critical function such as obfuscation, anonymity and others.

TOR, which stands for The Onion Router, supports anonymous communications as an IP obfuscation service. It sends internet communications through a circuit-based, layered network. With more than 7,000 relays in the layered network, usage and location are concealed.

Like TOR integration, I2P works to support anonymity. Specifically, I2P allows users to host connected servers without revealing their locations. While TOR is a circuit-based routing solution, I2P uses packet-based routing. This means that it can route around service interruptions and congestion in the same way that internet IP routing functions. By doing so, I2P reinforces the redundancy and reliability of Verge. 

 is an initiative focused on the mass adoption of blockchain technology through awareness and education. Numerous athletes are active in this initiative, including Wyatt Hasil, Reena Norville, Shaquille Lewis, Malik Williams and others. Organizations that are also active in this program include the Manny Pacquiao Foundation, the Upstate Racing League and others.

 used in the Verge space. This highly secure wallet option is easy to use and compatible with various operating systems on mobile and desktop. 

Verge was originally known as DogeCoinDark, since it was a fork of Dogecoin created as its anonymous alternative. However, it quickly separated from Dogecoin and became its own blockchain. Justin Valo founded the open-source project in 2014 before rebranding it to Verge in 2016 as a decentralized network that’s supported by the volunteer Verge community. 

In 2018, a new website was released, Tor integration was completed, the first Verge meetup took place and 

. Over the next several years, the Verge merchandise store opened, the 

 partnership was established, more wallets were added, XVG became available on more exchanges and other milestones were achieved. 

The Verge community actively strives to expand the network’s reach and functionality by introducing more features, working with more exchanges and expanding its community.

XVG is the native token of Verge. It supports private, secure and quick transactions. The maximum supply of XVG is 16.555 billion tokens and the current circulating supply is roughly 16.52 billion. Verge supports halving after every 500,000 blocks, which cuts the token mining reward in half.

As of Jul 18, 2023, the current price of XVG is $0.00601765. The current price is down 0.9% off its high over the last 24 hours. The ATH for the Verge token is $0.261874, which occurred on Dec 24, 2017. Verge’s ATL of $0.00000223 was set on Feb 6, 2015. The current 24-hour trading volume is more than $26 million, and the current market cap is over $99 million.

PricePrediction is one of many leading sources 

 in the years ahead. Specifically, it predicts a price of $0.008 before the end of 2023, and $0.018 in 2025. Its prediction for price increases continues, with $0.038 anticipated in 2027, $0.079 in 2029 and $0.11 in 2030.

 over time, forecasting that XVG will close 2023 at $0.0132 and increase to $0.0218 by 2025. XVG is then expected to continue to rise to $0.0274 in 2027, $0.0447 in 2029 and $0.0631 in 2030.

Numerous factors impact price fluctuations in the crypto market, which makes it challenging to accurately predict future prices. As such, make sure to always 

If you’re interested in trading XVG tokens, you may do so on Bybit in the form of Perpetual Contracts. If you’re not currently a registered Bybit user, you can quickly complete the account setup process. Be sure to check out our 

. Once you’re done, you can proceed to fund your account with cryptocurrency and navigate to the 

Bitcoin, originally presented as a secure way to complete private transactions, has seen its popularity blossom over the years, but it falls short in providing anonymity to users. Verge supports quick, straightforward transactions that are completely anonymous for both the payer and the recipient. In addition to being functionally superior, Verge is a community-driven, open-source platform that’s compatible with numerous types of wallets. It’s been developed specifically as a superior alternative to Bitcoin, and word is quickly spreading about its benefits. In fact, Verge even has celebrity athlete endorsements for its Fueled by Verge program.

While any prediction about the future price of a cryptocurrency should be taken with a pinch of salt, there are solid reasons why Verge may continue to increase in popularity, as well as token price. In addition, the current price is exceptionally low, so it’s possible to invest in thousands of tokens at minimal cost.

The Verge blockchain has been designed from the ground up to surpass Bitcoin in key areas. As a community-driven network, it continues to build on its already excellent features today. The best way to appreciate its exciting differences and features is to use this blockchain for your next transaction.

Verge (XVG): Enabling Secure and Anonymous Transactions

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards