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

Bybit Institutional_Weekly Poster.png

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.

block-scholes-x-bybit-report.jpeg

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

flock.png

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

network3 tutorial.png

How to Complete Network3 Tasks for Bybit Web3 Airdrop Arcade

Altcoins

Saitama Inu is a community-driven platform built on the Ethereum blockchain that aims to lower the barriers of entry to the decentralized finance (DeFi) world.

saitama-inu-token-supply.png

saitaswap.png

saitamask.jpeg

saitarealty.png

saitama-inu-price-chart.png

saitama-spot-trading-bybit.png

For a token that’s not even two years old, SAITAMA has done an amazing job in terms of gaining popularity and establishing a community. It started as a meme coin, but has now transformed into much more. 

In this article, we’ll share some general information about the altcoin and then dig deep into its specifics. Then, we’ll answer the burning question of whether it’s worth buying. 

Saitama Inu is a community-driven platform built on the

 blockchain that strives to make it easier for regular people to enter the 

 (DeFi) world and trade cryptocurrencies and NFTs. 

To that end, they aim to teach people, specifically Gen Z, about financial management, wealth creation and savings via their platform.

, SAITAMA, is more than just a meme coin. SAITAMA is part of an entire ecosystem: Crypto games, an educational academy, an NFT marketplace, a smart wallet and more, some of which they’ve launched, with the rest to launch soon. In an effort to transition from its meme coin beginnings, Saitama Inu has also rebranded itself as Saitama and updated its logo.

. Hence, at the time of writing of this article (August 18, 2022), it’s just over a year old. 

The SAITAMA token is the tradable asset of the Saitama platform. It represents your rights on Saitama Inu. 

Unlike an NFT, this token is fungible, meaning that it’s not unique and is transferable, so you can exchange it with other tokens. It started as a dog-themed meme token, similar to the famous dog-themed meme coin, 

Two of the main features of this token are lock liquidity and anti-whale trap. 

, which freezes a certain percentage of SAITAMA so holders can’t move it. Token holders are incentivized to stake, as the network deducts 2% of each transaction made within the community as tax and shares it as a reward. “Anti-whale trap” means Saitama Inu is coded such that one person can’t hold too many coins. This safeguard minimizes the risk of 

The SAITAMA token was upgraded in June 2022 to its second version. The V2 token is more secure, sustainable and CEX-friendly. This upgraded token also has a higher dollar value, such that 1 million old SAITAMA tokens are 

 V2 token. This also means that the new token supply has been reduced to 1/1,000,000 that of the old supply. The old max supply was 100 quadrillion tokens, and with the reduction, the new max supply has become 100 billion tokens.

The biggest feature of the upgrade is that SAITAMA is no longer a 

, and has now become a utility token. As of August 16, 2022, more than half of its supply has been burned, and nearly 

The Saitama Inu universe has expanded beyond DeFi and currently includes tokens, a wallet, an app for storing and 

, a beta version of an NFT platform, and some other features that we‘ll cover below. 

But it’s not done yet. Saitama Inu has an entire road map planned for expansion. Once it’s fully developed, the Saitama Inu ecosystem will include products for education and entertainment, and features for blending the real world with DeFi. 

Following are some of the features that are live on the network.

 is the mobile and desktop app of the Saitama Inu ecosystem. It’s a noncustodial wallet and a 

(DEX), all in a single platform. You can buy crypto from your debit or credit card (this feature is called SaitaPay), stake your tokens or use them for yield farming, transfer to multiple recipients, etc. 

It contains a DApp browser as well, supporting various DeFi DApps. The SaitaPro app also supports the NFT platform FANG (more on this later), and features 

, which allows you to perform various functions like trading tokens of selected reliable projects, staking and providing liquidity. 

 provides basic wallet-related features, such as the ability to move, store, trade and stake cryptocurrencies and tokens. It also features SaitaSwap. With this app, you can view analytics, such as a coin’s performance and token prices. It also shows you all the necessary information about your portfolio’s performance. 

 was created to form a decentralized realty ecosystem that benefits poor people while allowing investors to earn profits. Its ERC-20 token, SaitaRealty, also resides on the Saitama Inu network. It works by collecting capital — via investments from SaitaRealty token holders and transaction tax — which can then be used to buy 

Once the real property starts earning profits, 50% of the revenue will be distributed for franchising and expansion, while 25% will be allocated to the token holders who’ve staked the tokens. The remaining 25% will be used to support low-income veterans and homeless populations.

This is the NFT platform of the Saitama Inu ecosystem. With it, you’ll be able to use various Saitama tokens to trade NFTs once the final website — which is still in 

Source: Etherscan.ioFollowing are some features of the Saitama Inu network that are still under development. 

This is the main feature which sets the Saitama Inu platform apart from all others. The goal is to produce valuable content on social media channels (and their SaitaPro app) to help you and the next generation of investors make smart choices.  

The Saitama Inu platform is working on launching three 

, under the Saitama Studios umbrella. Once they’re launched, you’ll have another way to earn tokens and rewards, in addition to staking and yield farming. 

Saitama Inu currently resides on the Ethereum blockchain, but the developers are working on creating their own blockchain called 

. The perks will include improved transactions, more utilities and reduced tax. 

This will be the Saitama Inu metaverse where all products and features will come together. Here you’ll be able to shop with SAITAMA assets, buy and sell NFTs, play games and interact socially with other users. 

There are two main similarities between Saitama Inu and Shiba Inu: They’re both dog-themed ERC-20 tokens on the ETH network, and each one started as a meme coin but has since transformed into a utility token with various use cases. 

The major difference between these two altcoin platforms is that Saitama Inu has an anti-whale trap, while 

Saitama Inu is also more transparent, in the sense that it’s made its road map, team members and other such information public, whereas Shiba Inu keeps it hidden. Such details can affect investors’ confidence in a cryptocurrency. However, Shiba Inu has a much stronger community following, having been in the market longer.

Saitama Inu Price Prediction: Is SAITAMA a Good Investment?

SAITAMA’s price has increased significantly after the token upgrade, due to the shortage of the token’s supply. Its all-time high (ATH) price (for its V1 token) was $0.0000002777, while its ATH price for its V2 token is $0.007825. However, following the bearish conditions in the crypto market, its price has dropped to around $0.003. That said, its road map is promising, with unique features that the next generation will appreciate. 

Some experts predict that SAITAMA’s price will increase after the token upgrade, since the shortage of a token’s supply increases its demand. 

PricePrediction forecasts that SAITAMA will 

 by 2025. Telegaon has a similar bullish outlook on the SAITAMA price, predicting it to hit the $0.01 cap by 2025. 

This information in no way represents investment advice. Always do your own research, and check out third-party sources before deciding to invest in this altcoin. 

SAITAMA is listed on multiple cryptocurrency exchanges. You can use any of them to invest in this altcoin, including its official DEX SaitaSwap, other DEXs like 

Purchasing on Bybit is easy, safe and convenient with its user-friendly interface and multilingual 24/7 customer support. 

How to Buy Saitama Inu (SAITAMA) on Bybit

Follow these steps to buy SAITAMA on Bybit: 

SAITAMA plans on expanding its ecosystem, which has a lot of investors excited. Its road map looks promising and shows growth potential. However, the platform has delayed launching some of its features in the past, such as the SaitamaPro app, which makes others skeptical about whether the altcoin will make it in the long run. 

Since Saitama Inu is quite young, we recommend you give it time and watch its movements closely to see if it’s worth investing in. 

Saitama Inu: Simplifying DeFi for All

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards