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

Spot prices have jumped significantly in the two weeks following the November 5, 2024 U.S. elections, propelling Bitcoin to new all-time highs, while Ethereum hasn’t kept pace. The implied volatility term structure has inverted again in tandem with these spot price movements, although longer-dated tenors remain relatively stable. Derivatives market indicators reflect strong positive sentiment: perpetual funding rates are consistently positive, open interest in futures contracts is rapidly increasing and options skew remains firmly positive.

Open interest in futures has surged, indicating heightened market participation and a growing interest in leveraged exposure due to recent price movements. Similarly, open interest in perpetual contracts has sharply increased, fueled by rising trader confidence and a growing demand for leveraged positions in light of recent market rallies. Meanwhile, the implied volatility term structure continues to invert in alignment with spot price increases, demonstrating a sustained correlation between spot prices and volatility.

Please check out the report’s highlights.

Futures Open Interest Reaches ATH Along With Price

Perpetual swap open interest has been increasing alongside futures, with a consistent rise in open positions over the past week reaching all-time high activity levels. This trend suggests that traders are actively pursuing leveraged exposure in response to the ongoing spot rallies, aiming to capitalize on the rising spot prices. Notably, there’s been renewed interest in Ethereum (ETH), reflected in rising trading volumes. 

Perpetual swap funding rates have reached exceptionally positive levels, indicating that long positions are confident enough to pay these rates to sustain their leveraged exposure. This trend has consistently been observed across all tokens, with a noticeable rise in funding rates since Nov 10, 2024. The persistently high funding rates highlight the strength of the bullish sentiment, which is also evident in the increasing open interest in futures contracts. This aligns with the recent spot price action, demonstrating significant upward momentum.

Option Volatility Term Structure Inverts 

The implied volatility term structure for Bitcoin has inverted amid the recent spot rallies over the past few weeks, indicating heightened market uncertainty and expectations of imminent price movements. However, levels haven’t exceeded the highs seen before the elections, and longer-dated tenors remain firmly range-bound. Concurrently, open interest in Bitcoin options has risen significantly, with a notable increase in put trading volumes. Open interest in puts has slightly surpassed calls, despite the persistently bullish market outlook indicated by the volatility smile skew.

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Bybit X Block Scholes Crypto Derivatives Analytics Report (Nov 20, 2024): Market Becomes Extremely Positive About Bitcoin as Volatility Curve Turns Invert

Learn how to join Bybit's VIP Program, where you can realize exclusive benefits — from up to 50% off trading fees and tailored interest rates to instant OTC trades up to $10M.

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How to Sign up to Become a Bybit VIP Trader

In the following section, you'll find a step-by-step guide that shows you how to join the Bybit VIP Program.

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After becoming a VIP trader on Bybit, don't forget to maintain your VIP status to continue enjoying the exclusive perks and benefits.

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How to Get Started With a 20-Day Bybit VIP Trial

Another way to qualify for VIP status on Bybit is through a 20-day trial. Instead of fulfilling the requirements of the VIP 1 level, simply fund your account with $50,000 to enjoy the exclusive benefits of the program for 20 days with a VIP Trial Card (issued one day after your deposit). The VIP trial offer is available to users who haven't used a trial within the past two months.

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Intermediate

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How to Become a Bybit VIP: Your Guide to Exclusive Benefits

LETSTOP is a drive-to-earn mobile app that monitors phone distractions while driving. Learn more about how it works in this article.

Smartphone distractions have created an unprecedented road safety crisis worldwide. 

: texting behind the wheel makes drivers six times more likely to crash than drunk driving does — yet millions of drivers still use their phones while operating vehicles.

This article explores how LETSTOP is transforming safe driving into rewarding experiences through blockchain technology. We'll examine its drive-to-earn model, reward system, tokenomics and potential as both a road safety solution and an investment opportunity.

 is a drive-to-earn mobile app that monitors phone distractions while driving. Users earn STOP tokens for phone-free driving through a gamified system that transforms daily drives into rewarding experiences.

A life-changing car accident caused by a distracted driver running a red light inspired LETSTOP co-founder Almog Nissan to reimagine road safety. Together with co-founder and CEO Dor Levy, they envisioned rewarding safe driving, rather than just punishing dangerous behavior.

The founders built a platform that combines automotive technology, cryptocurrency and AI to revolutionize road safety through rewards. This innovative approach has quickly gained traction, with over 50,000 users logging over 3 million kilometers of safe driving since the app’s launch.

Distracted driving claims thousands of lives annually, with 

, of which 9% are directly linked to phone use. LETSTOP aims to tackle this crisis as follows:

Each of these objectives works harmoniously to support LETSTOP's ultimate mission of transforming road safety into a rewarding experience that benefits both individual drivers and society.

The LETSTOP app operates through a sophisticated system that monitors and rewards safe driving through the following apps and features:

The result is a dynamic system in which better driving habits unlock greater earning potential.

The following five core features power LETSTOP's drive-to-earn ecosystem.

LETSTOP uses a dynamic 40-level system to make safe driving rewarding. As drivers earn XP through distraction-free journeys, they advance from Level 1's 2% bonus toward Level 40's 70% boost. Through this gamified approach, daily commutes become opportunities to climb the ranks while building safer driving habits.

LETSTOP Credits are the core currency of the platform, earned directly through safe driving achievements. Earning rates directly scale with user level, vehicle type and subscription tier as follows: PRO subscribers enjoy unlimited earning potential, while PLUS and LITE tiers are capped at 300 and 150 monthly credits, respectively.

In the STOP Store, users invest their earned credits into virtual cars with unique earning multipliers. From the basic model's 2% bonus to the Jazzster GN's 150% boost, each vehicle offers different strategic advantages for maximizing rewards.

Beyond vehicles, the store features mystery boxes containing rewards from 10 to 450 credits, as well as car upgrades and subscription boosts. Users can also access a voucher marketplace to redeem credits for real-world rewards through LETSTOP's partnership network.

LETSTOP's triple-boost system combines vehicle multipliers for immediate earnings acceleration, a level-progression system for sustained growth and a 5% referral program for community expansion. Premium membership unlocks enhanced benefits across three tiers, while special events create time-limited opportunities for increased rewards.

The platform's comprehensive rewards system operates across three membership tiers, each one tailored to different user needs. LETSTOP PRO (at $9.90 monthly) offers unlimited credit earning potential and exclusive benefits. The PLUS tier provides a balanced option at $4.90 monthly with a 300-credit earning cap, while the free LITE tier allows users to earn up to 150 monthly credits.

Beyond direct earnings, the rewards system incorporates partner vouchers, cryptocurrency conversion options and community features, such as leaderboards. Achievement rewards recognize milestones in users' safe driving journeys, while the upcoming cryptocurrency integration will allow users to convert their efforts into tradeable STOP tokens.

LETSTOP has shown consistent progress, with the following key milestones already achieved:

Looking ahead to 2025, LETSTOP plans to implement the following key developments:

These developments aim to strengthen LETSTOP's position as a leader in drive-to-earn while furthering its mission to enable safer roads worldwide.

STOP is an SPL token built on the Solana network. It’s designed to bridge safe driving behavior with cryptocurrency rewards. The STOP token implements an annual halving mechanism to ensure long-term value preservation, similar to Bitcoin's model, but accelerated to align with the project's growth trajectory.

STOP has a max supply of 100 million tokens, to be distributed in the following manner:

The growing adoption of LETSTOP's drive-to-earn app and its impact on road safety directly influence STOP's price trajectory. While cryptocurrency forecasts remain speculative by nature, multiple price analysis platforms project the following for STOP:

These forecasts suggest a positive long-term outlook for STOP, driven by the growing drive-to-earn sector and LETSTOP's innovative approach to road safety. However, STOP's future value will ultimately depend upon user adoption, platform development and broader market conditions.

Looking to trade LETSTOP tokens? Bybit now offers the STOP/USDT Spot trading pair. To get started, you’ll first need to create a Bybit account, then fund it with cryptocurrency and navigate to the 

STOP shows promising potential in the drive-to-earn sector, though investors should carefully weigh both its strengths and potential risks before making investment decisions.

While STOP's innovative approach to road safety and its strong initial traction distinguish it in the market, potential investors should 

 and invest no more than they can afford to lose.

As smartphone distractions continue to endanger lives on roads worldwide, LETSTOP offers an innovative path forward. Through its innovative drive-to-earn model and STOP token ecosystem, the platform transforms daily commutes into safer roads and user earnings opportunities, showing how digital innovation can effectively “drive” positive behavioral change.

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LETSTOP (STOP): Turning Daily Rides Into Profitable Journeys

FDUSD, a stablecoin from First Digital Labs, is now live on Sui as a native token, joining other stablecoins like USDC and AUSD.

The S&P 500 ended flat amid mixed earnings and geopolitical concerns, as investors awaited Thursday's data and Fed commentary. Coindesk Indices, an index measuring broader cryptocurrency market performance was up by 2.01%, with Bitcoin rising by 1.91% and Ether dropping by 0.59%, in the past 24 hours.

Today's top performer is LUMIA, which surged 16.1% following the announcement of its partnership with Cobox to bridge real-world assets and virtual ownership.

Lumia (LUMIA), founded in 2024, is a Layer 2 blockchain solution leveraging the Polygon CDK to enhance scalability, liquidity, and interoperability. It addresses challenges like data availability and cross-chain interactions by incorporating AvailDA for decentralized data and Polygon AggLayer for cross-chain functionality, enabling efficient and flexible dApp development. 

 to integrate real-world assets (RWAs) into its immersive, player-owned universe. This collaboration aims to enhance asset liquidity, trading, and gameplay experiences, bridging digital and physical realms for more tangible and vibrant virtual ownership.

Check Out the Latest Prices, Charts, and Data of 

, a stablecoin from First Digital Labs, is now live on Sui as a native token, joining other stablecoins like USDC and AUSD. This launch reflects growing institutional confidence in Sui, which has seen significant growth in TVL and DeFi volume. FDUSD, backed by reserves in Asian banks and US Treasury debt, offers DeFi users a reliable, US Dollar-pegged stablecoin, bridging traditional finance and cryptocurrency ecosystems.

Yesterday, the total flow into Bitcoin Spot ETFs is $146.9 million, with $0 million in GBTC and $146.9 million in non-GBTC products.

: the Spotlight Badge, which requires minting through the Spotlight Protocol and joining a Spotlight circle; the Impossible Finance Badge, which involves completing social tasks, claiming the TIDIA faucet, staking TIDIA on Impossible Finance, and then claiming the badge; and the SNGLR Badge, where users connect their wallet, follow artists, mint IP assets, tweet, and provide personal details to claim their badge. More badges are coming soon!

Beginner

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FDUSD Launches as Native Stablecoin on Sui, Strengthening DeFi Ecosystem

Blockchain

Crypto

The Ethereum London hard fork aims to facilitate the network transition to ETH 2.0. But what are the highlights? Learn more.

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As fascinating as cryptocurrencies are, they are not necessarily perfect. So depending on the types of an upgrade, the nodes may need to undergo the updates to remain within the same blockchain. If the upgrade is backward-compatible, meaning that a node may not need to update the blockchain to remain within it, this is known as a 

. A hard fork is completely different and rather more complicated.

Ethereum has been through various forks throughout its history, including the most recent forks 

 and the upcoming Ethereum London hard fork on the 

. This begs the question: How sustainable is the Ethereum network going to be? How will it impact the network transaction fee that is prone to congestion on the network? Ultimately, is this upgrade doom for all “Ethereum Killers?”

In this article, we’re getting down into the nitty-gritty to find out the rationale behind the Ethereum London hard fork and to highlight some of its features.

Upgrades that aren’t backward-compatible in a cryptocurrency network are known as 

. If a node doesn’t upgrade its blockchain, it may no longer be a part of the network. There are several implications to the introduction of hard forks. Because soft forks are backward-compatible, a node can choose to remain in the network without the new features, even if the node isn’t satisfied with the new updates. The same cannot be said about hard forks. 

Ethereum hard fork illustration. Source: SimpleSwap


Another implication of hard forks comes into play if a rather considerable portion of the network is not satisfied with the new updates. Nodes may choose to remain in the non-updated, original blockchain, while the ones that update stay in the updated one. This separation may cause the creation of a new cryptocurrency. This was the case with Ethereum Classic.

For instance, Ethereum Classic created due to the 

. Around $50 million was stolen from a DApp in the network. To keep this from happening again, Ethereum created a hard fork that involved various changes, including a future transition from 

 (PoS). A portion of the total nodes in the network at that time did not want to undergo such changes remained in the original Ethereum blockchain, now known as 

But this has not been the only hard fork that Ethereum has had. For example, the most recent Ethereum hard fork includes the Berlin hard fork in April 2021. The next hard fork which will occur in the Ethereum network is the long-awaited London fork. All of these forks are planned to be the stepping-stone for the major upgrade of Ethereum, 

How Will Ethereum 2.0 Hard Fork Carried Out?

Ethereum 2.0 is the biggest update that Ethereum may undergo in its lifespan to date. This update has three main phases.

 and introduced the Beacon Chain. The Beacon Chain was the first step into transitioning from PoW to PoS. The main reason for this update is that PoS has proven to be more efficient than PoW in terms of energy usage. This, in turn, has repercussions for the environment because a PoW cryptocurrency is more likely to waste energy and leave carbon footprints.

 Ethereum plans to integrate shards into the Ethereum network and connect them with the 

. Such shards can increase the performance rate in the Ethereum network. 

It involves the full utilization of the shards and makes the current Ethereum blockchain one of the shards of Serenity.

As mentioned, such updates need to happen gradually because drastic changes may result in negative outcomes. Because of this, forks such as the Berlin hard fork were rolled out first.

The Berlin hard fork occurred with Block 12,244,000 and involved the EIP-2565, EIP-2718, EIP-2929, and EIP-2930 updates. 

 reduction in the Ethereum network. This was relatively beneficial for users as they needed to pay less in ETH for running services on the Ethereum network. This is done through a function known as modular exponentiation, or simply ModExp.

EIP-2718 involved a new function known as the typed transaction envelope. With this function, Ethereum transactions are backward-compatible. This completely changes the approach to transactions in Ethereum, as they may become much easier to add through the use of “envelopes.”

This was a proposal that involved the increase of gas prices 

. In the past, since such gas fees were cheap, there have been attempts for denial-of-service (DoS) attacks using Opcodes. To lessen this possibility, Vitalik Buterin increased gas fees considerably. Note that this happened before the Berlin hard fork.

Lastly, this update involved a new type of transaction, which includes a specific list of addresses. The addresses in this access list can trade using much smaller gas fees. If a user wants to trade with someone outside the access list, the gas fees are a little higher.

Now that we know a little about the Berlin hard fork, let’s look at the London hard fork, and how these two might be connected for the future of Ethereum and Serenity.

The Ethereum London hard fork rollout is scheduled for its deployment on the Goerli testnet on June 30. Following that, it will be launched on the Rinkeby testnet on July 7, and to fully deploy 

 on Ethereum mainnet at the end of July.

The update supposes to address some of the controversies within the crypto communities. Not everyone supports the features planned for this update. However, if the developers see that a big part of the community is not going through with the update, they can return the old features with the next phases of Ethereum 2.0. So perhaps these changes may not be permanent after all.

The Ethereum London hard fork is going to bring several new features, including two EIPs which we’ll cover in the next section. Basically, the whole purpose of the London hard fork is to prepare users for the adoption of the Ethereum transition from Proof-of-Work (PoW) to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) when Serenity or Ethereum 2.0 comes.

Ethereum’s Transaction Fee System Alteration

Instead of selecting the fees yourself to determine the speed of your transaction, the Ethereum network will set transaction fees with a base fee for each block rather than bidding on gas prices. This naturally translates that transaction speed will also be equivalent for all users. However, there is still an option for you to tip the responsible nodes for securing the network.

But, there is a small flaw with this new method, namely a potential slippage in the gas fees. You may advance with a transaction at a fixed gas fee, but by the time the transaction is finished, the gas fee may have increased. This could lead to unwanted losses when conducting transactions. But there’s also a solution: You can simply set a fee cap, and decide on the maximum amount of gas fees that you’re willing to pay. This prevents the possibility of paying unwanted gas fees.

Currently, Ethereum has inflationary properties because of its unlimited and relatively large supply. That’s going to change with the London hard fork, as Ethereum is going to be more deflationary.

Although the transition to PoS from PoW might be a win for efficiency and the environment, some may still not be on board. For example, miners who have invested in powerful processing mining rigs (i.e., ASIC miners) might argue that their investment may go to waste. Moreover, they might also assert that PoW is more profitable than PoS, even though it requires more energy.

. EIPs are considered to be the biggest changes in a hard fork in the Ethereum network. The Ethereum London hard fork has two EIPs planned. These are EIP-1559 and EIP-3238, according to the 

The first proposal is the EIP-1559, which is also known as the Fee Market Change for ETH 1.0 Chain. This proposal is perhaps the biggest change because it involves transaction fees. EIP-1559 plans to set a fixed fee for everyone, so you may no longer be able to decide how quickly your transaction is conducted. The fee that is used for each transaction gets burned, so ETH from the total supply is reduced. This new burning mechanism is likely to make Ethereum more deflationary, which could play a big role in the future price of ETH. 

This fixed transaction fee changes, and will be based on congestion levels in the blocks of transactions. The threshold for the fee change is 50%, so if a block is filled with more than that level of transactions, the fixed fee is increased. If the level is lower than 50%, the fixed fee is decreased.

The other proposal is EIP-3238 — portentously known as the Ethereum Difficulty Bomb Delay. This update is going to make mining Ethereum much more difficult than it currently is. As this proposal’s name suggests, mining times will be longer, making PoW mining in Ethereum much more expensive while transactions get slower. You may wonder why the developers are doing this. The answer is simple: push people to transition to PoS. 

It is clear that the developers do not want the Ethereum 2.0 update to cause the creation of other blockchains as a result of the hard fork. The logic is as follows: if they make it very difficult for miners to mine, they’ll have to shift to PoS.

After the Ethereum London hard fork, there are still more ethereum improvement proposals to make Ethereum 2.0 more achievable. The next hard fork is the Ethereum Shanghai hard fork, planned to occur sometime during the last quarter of 2021. It’s anticipated that this fork may bring Ethereum 1.0 and 2.0 together to make the final implementations much smoother. However, this fork is still speculative, and its prospective features are still uncertain at this time. After the Shanghai hard fork, there might be yet another fork before the final phases of Serenity.

To sum up, the Ethereum London hard fork is one of the most anticipated hard forks in the Ethereum network as developers take another step into the Ethereum 2.0 update and foster a better ethereum community. While some might not be satisfied with the deviation of Ethereum mining, some are rather excited about the impact it gives to the rise of decentralized finance.

Whatever these new rules bring may produce outcomes crucial to both the network and the community. Only time will tell regarding the future of Ethereum after this fork. Nonetheless, it is an update integral to Ethereum’s improvement.

What Is the Ethereum London Hard Fork?

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