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

Bybit Learn

DeFi

Explainers

Altcoins

Bluefin is a decentralized exchange designed for both novice and professional traders. Learn more about how it works in this article.

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When it comes to decentralized trading, one of the biggest challenges is to create an exchange that’s both complex and convenient. Many sites that offer high-end crypto features end up being too overwhelming and confusing for users to work with. Bluefin hopes to solve this problem by creating a system that's intuitive for both experts and novices. Can it succeed at its dream of creating a user-focused, decentralized spot exchange for trading all sorts of assets? Explore this guide to see how Bluefin works and learn whether it's likely to be successful. 

 (DEX) designed for use by both novice and professional traders. It uses an 

 blockchain. Bluefin hopes to distinguish itself from other DEXs due to its flexibility and convenience.

 by brothers Rabeel and Ahmad Jawaid. Ahmad was initially a software engineer at Incorta, while Rabeel was an investment analyst at Optimus Capital, Inc. Eventually, both brothers realized they could take their interests and expertise and apply them to the world of crypto. 

In the years since the Jawaid brothers first started working on their exchange, Bluefin has grown rapidly. It's hired numerous employees who have studied at top schools, such as UC Berkeley and the University of Pennsylvania. Bluefin has also acquired funding from Polychain, SIG, Brevan Howard Digital and Tower Research Capital, and has partnered with the Sui Foundation. 

Bluefin's creators aim to completely redefine the user experience for DEXs, having noticed that many of them have struggled to onboard new users. Bluefin plans to mimic the seamless, fast experience of 

 (CEXs) while staying true to its decentralized roots. In order to do so, Bluefin is 

 that make its blockchain-based system intuitive for Web 2.0 users. 

At the same time, Bluefin wants to incorporate the best that 

 has to offer. Thus, it aims to be a DEX that features transparent, accessible governance. By focusing on blockchain features like scalability and decentralization, Bluefin believes it can create a system that protects users' rights, provides excellent execution prices and appeals to the broadest audience possible.

Bluefin is a central limit order book (CLOB) system. This type of exchange consists of a central system that has a list of all customer orders, and matches customer bids and offers to pair buyers and sellers in the most efficient way possible. CLOB-based systems offer many benefits, including the best execution prices and complete transparency. 

However, CLOB-based systems often have some downsides for decentralized derivatives trading. They can be a little slow at times, and can lead to market manipulation. Therefore, Bluefin has implemented a 

. Its order book can store and match orders off-chain to speedily handle transactions, and the orders are then moved to an on-chain engine for verification and settlement.

Bluefin prides itself on offering a variety of services to users. The following are the primary ways you can use Bluefin to manage your major assets.

Swapping tokens lets people convert one style of token to another. Bluefin's Swap offers real-time pricing, so users can get the ideal execution prices. It also provides a wide range of token pairs, so users have plenty to choose from. 

Bluefin Perps is the site's perpetual futures trading system. It allows users to trade certain protocols even before their token generation events go live. Bluefin only allows perpetuals for carefully vetted protocols. Therefore, users don't have to be as concerned about 

Bluefin's liquidity pools are a way to help its DEX run more smoothly. Users can choose to temporarily lend their major assets to liquidity pools, so there's always a supply of liquid tokens available to execute trades. Liquidity providers earn rewards in exchange for their participation.

 that gives people both Blue Points and Sui tokens for participating in the Bluefin ecosystem. Reward points are determined based on the weekly amount of fees a user pays. 

 makes it easier for users to move major assets between chains. In addition to cross-chain transfers, 

 also makes it easier to transfer funds between wallets.

Bluefin has spent several years setting up its exchange system and attracting users. Next on the 

 are plans to further enhance its technology. In the near future, the team hopes to allow users to sync their accounts with Google for one-click sign-in. Bluefin is also working on mobile trading and one-click, cross-chain transfers for ecosystem assets.

In the long run, Bluefin aims to add more decentralization to its system. It plans to implement a node network that can maintain the order book in a trustless environment. Bluefin also hopes to launch a 

 (DAO) that’s capable of independently making decisions for its platform. 

 is an event designed to encourage and reward community engagement. Bluefin plans to distribute almost 20% of its crypto token to Bluefin community users. Participants can collect points for the airdrop based on various parameters, such as the duration of their time spent on Bluefin and the number of programs they've participated in.

 to check their eligibility and claim their tokens. Registration for the Bluefin airdrop began in late 2024 and will run through February 2025. 

Bluefin hopes that the BLUE token will be its first step toward true decentralization. Intended to be used as a governance token, BLUE will help manage user incentives and proposal votes. BLUE tokens have a 

 and an initial circulating supply of 150.385 million. The Sui-based token will unlock on a five-year schedule that eventually allows the circulating supply to reach 1 billion as well. All of the tokens will be distributed according to the following design:

Since BLUE first appeared on exchanges, it's experienced some impressive price growth. BLUE tokens initially retailed for around $0.20, reaching an all-time high of $0.8567 by Dec 15, 2024. After the excitement of a sudden price peak, BLUE’s price then stabilized between $0.40–$0.50. Currently, many CoinMarketCap users report 

, with Bluefin’s market cap at around $52 million. Many believe that BLUE may be undervalued, and could rise in price soon. 

How much will Bluefin crypto prices increase? CoinCodex's 

 may more than double within a month, as its trading volume continues to soar to reach at least $1 by January 2025. If BLUE follows a trajectory typical of new cryptos, its price is forecast to keep climbing through March and then stabilize at roughly $1 by the summer of 2025. 

Looking to trade Bluefin tokens? Bybit now offers the BLUEUSDT Perpetual contract. To get started, you’ll first need to create a Bybit account, then fund it with cryptocurrency and navigate to the 

Thanks to big price increases, increasing market cap and respectable trading volume, BLUE tokens are a hot commodity on the market right now. If your investment strategy involves buying up-and-coming tokens and quickly selling them, BLUE could be a good short-term investment.

Whether or not BLUE succeeds in the long run is more closely associated with Bluefin’s performance, as opposed to brief market trends. And even though Bluefin looks like a reliable DEX, it has a lot of competition. If the site fails to become the most popular decentralized spot for trading and to further enhance its technology, Bluefin’s crypto could suffer. Therefore, investors need to remain a bit cautious about Bluefin's ecosystem assets. Carefully 

 both market conditions and Bluefin news before purchasing, and try to avoid overextending yourself financially.

Bluefin aims to revolutionize the DEX industry by offering an unparalleled user experience and the best execution prices. However, with so many other similar exchanges being created, Bluefin will have to work hard to distinguish itself in the decentralized derivatives trading market. Only time will tell whether the Bluefin team can deliver on all its promises and capture the attention of DeFi traders.

Bluefin (BLUE): Surfing the Currents of Cross-Chain Trade

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards