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

Crypto

A SIM swap crypto attack is a hack in which a scammer copies a phone’s SIM card information. Learn more about how it works in this article.

Being able to store funds digitally is convenient, but it can also make your money vulnerable to scammers and hackers. Unfortunately, hackers are constantly developing new methods for stealing crypto. A new type of attack called a SIM swap has even managed to fool crypto experts like Vitalik Buterin. What are SIM swap attacks, and how can you protect your crypto from this fraud method? Keep reading to learn more about how SIM swaps work.

A SIM swap crypto attack is a hack in which a scammer copies a phone's SIM card information. This allows the hacker to bypass two-factor authentication and gain access to crypto accounts. Once the hacker has accessed an account, they can easily steal crypto or other assets.

A SIM swap attack is a type of hack that essentially clones your cell phone number. The first step of this attack involves the hacker switching the 

 from your phone to theirs. They can do this by stealing your phone and manually removing the card, or they can pretend to be you and use social engineering tactics to trick your mobile carrier into remotely transferring the SIM.

Once the hacker has your SIM card information in their phone, it will essentially function like your phone. All calls and texts will go to their phone, and if they call anyone from their phone, your number will show up on the receiving party’s caller ID. Having their victim's phone number makes it very easy for SIM swap attackers to get around routine security mechanisms like two-factor authentication. They can use their victim's phone number to receive one-time password texts, and log in to the victim's online accounts.

Some sites with shoddy security measures will also allow users to automatically reset an account over a verified phone number. The hacker can potentially call a site's customer service center and get a password reset for the victim's account — without even having to provide any other verifying information.

How Does a SIM Swap Attack Affect Crypto Traders and Investors?

As the result of a SIM swap attack, a hacker can easily get into a variety of online crypto wallets. They can then transfer the tokens straight to their own account and steal all your money. If your crypto wallet uses stored credit cards or bank accounts to purchase crypto, the hacker can also use that information to steal more money from you or buy more crypto for themselves. The concept of a SIM swap is especially risky for those who use a lot of 

 products with internet connectivity. While 

 might remain somewhat secure, any service that allows you to link your phone number to your account could be vulnerable to a SIM swap.

SIM swapping poses some major dangers for crypto traders. In the wake of countless data breaches and phishing attacks, two-factor authentication via phone has become the gold standard for security. Many people assume that setting up two-factor authentication (2FA) makes their accounts completely secure. Unfortunately, the reality is that two-factor authentication is very easy to get around. With a SIM swapping attack, any trader or investor's personal accounts could be hacked.

How to Recognize the Signs of a SIM Swap Crypto Attack

Being able to recognize a SIM swap crypto attack can help you take steps to address the problem before it gets worse. The most important sign of a SIM swap to be aware of is that your phone will be unable to make calls and send messages. Since the hacker's phone will be using your SIM card, the card in your phone will no longer function. You'll still be able to connect to WiFi, but you won't be able to use data for things like texts and calls.

Many hackers are aware of this trick for spotting a SIM swap, so they'll try to trick you into turning off your phone before they begin. Many people who deal with a SIM swap crypto attack report that their phone was bombarded with constant calls and messages right before the swap. You might also get some suspicious texts or emails before a SIM swap because a hacker is trying to use phishing to collect your data and make it easier to access your account. Typically, mobile service providers notify clients of SIM swaps, so make sure to regularly check your email to see if they've notified you of an upcoming SIM card activation.

A SIM swap crypto attack can have disastrous consequences. Here are a few examples of high-profile SIM swapping attacks that have recently been in the news.

Vitalik Buterin X/Twitter SIM Swap Attack

In one shocking case, hackers combined a SIM swap attack with a phishing attack to steal

. The hack started with a SIM swap that targeted Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin's X/Twitter account. Since his phone was linked to his account, the hackers could access it without even using a password. The hackers then used Buterin's account to tweet a phishing link, and when other social media accounts clicked on it, their crypto and NFTs were stolen.

 social media accounts were the target of another substantial SIM swap fraud. In this attack, a hacker stole about 

 in under 24 hours by using SIM swaps. Many of friend.tech's high-profile users raised awareness about the dangers of SIM swapping by posting about the issue online.

A British hacker known as PlugwalkJoe was able to steal almost $800,000 worth of cryptocurrency through SIM swapping. The hacker targeted high-level executives at a crypto corporation, and once he was able to use the SIM swap to access the company's online accounts he transferred

Can You Prevent a SIM Swap Crypto Attack?

Are SIM swap crypto attacks completely unavoidable? With the way phone and crypto companies are set up, they can be quite hard to prevent. Many sites' current security measures mean that any SIM swapper has free reign to control your account. Furthermore, mobile carrier companies aren't doing much to prevent SIM swaps. There currently aren’t any regulations requiring mobile service providers to authenticate customers before agreeing to move a subscriber identity module (SIM) to another phone.

Therefore, the prevention of SIM swap attacks relies almost entirely on individual users. You cannot assume that every site is doing its best to 

. Instead, you need to take the time to set up preventative measures on your own. By doing some research into security policies and practicing some safety guidelines, you can reduce your risk of encountering SIM swap fraud.

Even if most sites and mobile carriers aren't taking steps to prevent SIM swaps, there are several things you can do to safeguard your security. Follow these tips to prevent SIM swap attacks.

What Should You Do if You’re Victimized by a SIM Swap Crypto Attack?

If SIM swappers access accounts, it's important to act fast. Start by contacting your mobile carrier and alerting them to the issue. Ask them to either disable your number temporarily or return the number to your SIM. Make sure to file a complaint and keep a record of their inability to secure your SIM just in case you need to escalate the issue later on.

Next, turn to your crypto accounts. It can take a little while for your mobile carrier to restore your SIM, so make sure you remove your phone number from all crypto and bank accounts and disable two-factor verification via phone. Enhance your security further by changing your password and contacting the site's customer service team to ask if you can freeze your account or add other security messages.

Once you've stopped the SIM swap attack, it's time to take steps to 

. File reports with local law enforcement to get help finding the hackers, and contact customer service for your bank accounts and any crypto sites you use. Some sites may be able to reverse transactions or restore money to the personal accounts of fraud victims. If you cannot get your money back from the site or recover it from the hackers, you may want to consider seeking legal counsel and filing a lawsuit to get compensation for your lost money.

SIM swapping is a troubling new way for hackers to access accounts. It takes advantage of password recovery or login processes that rely on phone numbers, so it can circumvent a lot of safety measures. The only way to protect yourself is to keep your personal information secure and carefully monitor your accounts for any suspicious activity.

SIM Swap Crypto Attack: Can You Prevent This Crypto Hack?

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards