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

Radicle is a decentralized, P2P network that brings programmers together without censorship. Its security is supported by Ethereum integration and a DAG.

Peer-to-peer collaboration plays several critical roles in the programming world. For example, it supports higher-level and creative thinking. At the same time, it can save time and yield more impressive results. However, until now, collaboration among programmers has largely been through centralized code collaboration platforms. Such platforms come with a range of downsides, such as censorship and security issues. A new 

 known as Radicle is changing the landscape and improving how programmers collaborate.

As a decentralized network, Radicle actively supports collaboration among software developers and programmers. Radicle users can access the network’s tools and features without the need for an intermediary. In addition to supporting censorship-resistant code collaboration, this is a secure platform that’s free to use and has a user-friendly interface. Its self-sustaining network is an open-source alternative to 

 and is accessible to its users offline. In addition, the Radicle project operates with collective 

The Radicle network was developed by Eleftherios Diakomichalis and Alexis Sellier. It launched in 2018 with the purpose of supporting public software projects and encouraging developer participation. While Radicle was initially built using the InterPlanetary File System (

) for decentralized storage, this created functionality and speed issues that resulted in a shift to Git for data replication and storage. Later, Radicle Link was developed as a peer-to-peer networking layer. Radicle made its first 

 decision in early 2021 when the community voted to distribute 3.75% of tokens held in the Balancer Liquidity Bootstrapping Pool to the community over the course of two days.

The centralized code collaboration platforms that have been popular over the years have recognized downfalls in areas such as security and censorship. Radicle was specifically created as an alternative to Git repositories. This project’s protocol is rooted in collective government mechanisms, which are tied to the 

, users can quickly and securely share data. Radicle developers continue to improve the network, and there are plans to support NFTs and to create decentralized finance (

Radicle works in both online and offline environments. Because it is accessible offline as well, it doesn’t require an internet connection or a Domain Name Service (

). Radicle uses Git as its data replication and storage layer. In this way, Git functions as the network’s database. 

Security is supported by PKC, or public-key cryptography, and Radicle smart contracts. Peer-to-peer collaboration is supported by Radicle Link, a communication layer. In addition, the Radicle project uses DAG for its distributed ledger to optimize scalability and speed. 

This innovative blockchain technology stands apart from other repositories through the use of several unique features. 

Coders can maintain local copies of their work on personal devices via Radicle, and Radicle Link supports data sharing via personal devices. Radicle users can leave reviews, cite issues and provide comments through this feature using PKC. This feature also supports those who use Git repositories as a peer-to-peer backup for their data.

A core aspect of Radicle is its code collaborative stack, which is composed of web3 tools. This peer-to-peer networking layer utilizes DAGs. Seed nodes serve the important roles of tracking projects, disseminating them and supporting new users. All users can operate a seed node. As a distributed ledger, this collaborative stack enhances speed and scalability.

As mentioned, Radicle was initially designed with the InterPlanetary File System in 2018, but this was scrapped and replaced with Git when the developers determined that it fell short of their performance expectations. In addition to the initial token launch, another 100 million RAD tokens were created in May 2021 with a one- to four-year vesting period for token holders. Thus far, more than a thousand projects have been completed with Radicle. Looking forward, Radicle plans to introduce DeFi tools and functions with NFTs.

The Radicle network operates with the RAD governance token, which supports collective community participation through DAO voting. In addition, Radicle users can take advantage of reduced or zero fees when using the RAD token for the network’s Ethereum-based tools. 

The current Radicle price is $1.60 as of Jul 17, 2023, which represents a 2.6% decline over the past 24 hours. The circulating supply is close to 50 million RAD, and the current market cap is $79.8 million. RAD’s 24-hour trading volume is just above $3.2 million, which represents a decrease of 15.2% over the last day.

 to increase considerably over the next few years. This source predicts that RAD will be priced at $2.05 at the end of this year, and will reach $5.56 in 2025, $12.80 by the end of 2028 and $22.30 by 2030. 

The experts at AMBCrypto aren’t the only ones who are bullish about RAD, as 

 also share the same sentiments with predictions that RAD will reach $3.52 by the end of 2023, and increase to $5.80 by 2025, $8.83 by 2028 and $16.77 by the end of 2030.

RAD tokens are available for purchase on Bybit as Perpetual Contracts. To make a purchase, you must first 

. Then, fund it with cryptocurrency before navigating to the 

. Once you’ve purchased RAD tokens, you can also access the platform's Ethereum-based tools and participate in community voting.

While RAD is a governance token that supports reduced or zero fees and voting rights for token holders, it also may be a lucrative investment. Digital assets are widely known for their price volatility, which makes them both risky and potentially very profitable. 

All digital assets could theoretically lose value quickly, but there are some cryptocurrencies that play a fundamental role in useful, well-designed crypto projects. RAD is one of those cryptos. With some sources projecting considerable price growth over the next decade, this could be an asset to consider holding. In order to minimize your exposure to risk and financial loss, only invest what you can afford to lose, and 

Radicle stands apart as a secure, self-sustaining network that supports censorship-resistant code collaboration. Its functionality offers benefits such as transparency, a decentralized and 

 environment and direct ownership of contributions. Radicle has already facilitated the completion of more than a thousand projects, and additional projects are in the works. Consider putting Radicle’s features to work today to collaborate on upcoming projects.

Radicle (RAD): A Crypto Alternative to GitHub for Code Collaboration

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards