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

Altcoins

Crypto

Featuring a multi-chain wallet, cross-chain bridges and more, discover all the things that make Coin98 (C98 crypto) worth your time and money.

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, decentralization and token swaps, the cryptocurrency industry offers plenty of opportunities for traders and investors to profit. However, users are often required to toggle between ecosystems and currencies to access services, making the buying/trading of cryptocurrencies a lengthy and troublesome experience. 

As global interest in decentralized finance (

) mounts, it’s now more crucial than ever for projects to focus on convenience to attract and retain users. If DeFi wants to gain mainstream traction, these solutions must also be easily accessible. With support for over 20 blockchains and their native assets, Coin98 makes it easy for users to explore different options. Let’s take a look at Coin98 and its native token C98.

The idea behind Coin98 started in early 2020, when DeFi began to reach new highs in value and attention. A surge in users’ contributed value made it an ideal time to build a new project. The crypto market required an open financial infrastructure, and Coin98 was developed to provide the answer.

Native to the Coin98 network, C98 is available on the Ethereum blockchain, Binance Smart Chain (BSC) and the Solana network. The token serves many functions such as allowing holders to earn a portion of transaction fees, giving them membership discounts for products and services, and rewarding them for staking cryptocurrency.

The C98 token represents a tradable asset or utility which resides on its blockchain and allows users to 

 it for investments and other economic purposes. C98 also enables users to govern the protocol indirectly via proposals that are used to improve its ecosystem.

With an increasing amount of competition in the crypto market, building an open, decentralized network for the financial sector is no easy feat. The blockchain space makes it difficult for users to get acquainted with different concepts and solutions, and options can’t be unified without implementing innovative technologies. By default, blockchains cannot communicate with one another. This is where Coin98 comes in.

 ecosystem consists of three main divisions: Coin98 Labs, Coin98 Ventures and Coin98 Network. In particular, Coin98 Ventures is designed to take blockchain and DeFi to the next level by finding and supporting developers who specialize in these fields. Coin98 Labs creates new DeFi solutions which make it easy for users to access markets. 

The Coin98 network comprises many diverse elements, with its ecosystem bringing together some of the biggest names in DeFi. Each of its three central divisions plays an important role in the continued growth and development of the project.

 is an incubator and accelerator built to empower new DeFi projects. It helps bootstrap creative projects across several blockchain platforms by investing in decentralized applications (DApps) and DeFi protocols built on Ethereum, 

 was established to “fulfill untapped demand and enhance in-demand utilities in the DeFi space.” This has been achieved by creating a diverse ecosystem of DeFi products and 

 across multiple blockchains. So far, the team has created numerous solutions including an exchange, a native wallet, multiple market solutions and a portfolio. Several other features are in the pipeline, including support for new chains on mobile, the integration of new cross-chain bridges and automated market maker options (

 is the platform’s in-house crypto network. It connects various communities and industry partners. The network provides a range of media resources and learning tools to equip the blockchain community with knowledge needed to navigate the DeFi landscape. In addition, the project’s media network handles community engagement initiatives such as contests for creating content. As the project grows, other utilities can be developed by the media division to help the platform achieve high levels of interoperability.

Coin98 has a total supply of 1 billion tokens, a current 

 of approximately 555 million. As of this writing, the price of one Coin98 token is $3.01, with a 24-hour trading volume of over $76 million. Coin98 is down 1.50% in the last 24 hours, and the volatility of C98/BUSD is

To help you make an informed investment decision, here are some of the pros and cons of Coin98 and its native token C98.

C98 tokens cannot be bought directly with fiat currency. However, you can purchase USDT tokens with fiat money and exchange them for C98 tokens.

. You’ll need to fill out basic details, such as your name, phone number, email, and address of residence.

 If you don’t possess USDT, you’ll need to first buy USDT tokens via bank transfer, debit card or credit card.

 Complete your transaction at a price of your choice using a 

. Simply enter your order price in USDT and the quantity of C98 tokens you wish to acquire. When the price reaches your specified amount, your order will be processed and the C98 tokens will be reflected in your account.

 (preferably a hardware wallet) to safely store your C98 tokens.

Once you have your C98 tokens, you can conduct various 

Coin98 is a new project aimed at improving DeFi infrastructure and interoperability. Although the C98 coin’s price isn’t stable yet, Coin98’s platform already offers investors a user-friendly wallet and rewards them with C98 for staking or including assets in liquidity pools. With the development of these features and the launch of new products in the ecosystem, the token is expected to show excellent results in the long run.

, C98 makes a solid long-term investment — so if you’re after virtual currencies with high potential, it’s definitely an option to check out. Based on forecasts, a long-term increase in price is anticipated, with C98 expected to hit $52.56 by 2026. That’s an increase of approximately 1,600% on its current price. 

The Coin98 ecosystem portrays itself as a hub for DeFi that unites top 

 to create a gateway for vast cross-chain liquidity. Furthermore, the diverse range of DeFi services and tools that users can find on the Coin98 protocol should meet their lending, liquidity and borrowing needs perfectly. Overall, Coin98 provides new projects with strong backing by injecting resources necessary for acceleration into the frameworks of crypto and DeFi. Its potential makes it a platform worth watching. 

Coin98 (C98 Crypto): An All-in-One DeFi Solution

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards