Apr 21, 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.

 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 — Trump wants to fire Powell? 

US president Donald Trump is actively considering firing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, following Trump's public criticism of Powell for not moving quickly enough to reduce interest rates. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett confirmed that the administration is examining this option, suggesting that Powell's actions have politically favored Democrats. Hassett argued that the Federal Reserve's decision to raise interest rates shortly after Trump took office was intended to undermine the economic impact of the tax cuts implemented during his administration, which were deemed inflationary. He further criticized the Fed for not addressing inflation concerns stemming from federal spending under President Biden, implying a lack of accountability.

During a recent press conference, Trump conveyed his dissatisfaction with Powell, asserting that if he wanted to remove him, it could happen "real fast." While he did not explicitly state his intention to dismiss Powell, his remarks highlighted the growing tensions between the White House and the Federal Reserve regarding monetary policy. Hassett defended Trump's frustrations, advocating for a focus on economic policy rather than interpersonal conflicts. This situation underscores the complex dynamics between the executive branch and the central bank, as Trump navigates economic challenges leading up to the next election.

Weekly crypto highlight — XRP ETF coming

HashKey Capital has officially launched the HashKey XRP Tracker Fund, marking the first investment fund in Asia designed specifically to track the performance of XRP, the digital asset integral to Ripple's global payment ecosystem. This fund is aimed at professional investors and offers a unique opportunity to gain exposure to XRP without the complexities of direct asset management. Investors can subscribe through cash and in-kind options, with the fund providing monthly liquidity.

Ripple, as an early backer of the fund, is looking to enhance its strategic partnership with HashKey Capital, which already manages Hong Kong–listed spot ETFs for Bitcoin and Ethereum. This collaboration not only solidifies Ripple's presence in the Asian market, but also opens avenues for future financial products, such as the potential tokenization of a money market fund on the XRP Ledger. Fiona Murray, Ripple's Managing Director for the Asia-Pacific region, highlighted that this partnership is part of a broader strategy to introduce more regulated cryptocurrency products for institutional investors in the region, aiming to foster a more robust crypto landscape in Asia.

Advanced

21 Apr 2025 weekly newsletter.png

Weekly Institutional Insights: Trump’s desire to fire Powell might induce volatility; XRP ETF coming

Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has approved a new Ethereum ETF with staking capabilities, allowing institutional investors to earn staking rewards.

Daily top performer — Pyth Network (PYTH)

The S&P 500 dropped 1.5% to 5,282.70 this week, down 5.9% in April and 10% year-to-date, led by tech losses. Real estate and energy outperformed, while political pressure on Fed Chair Powell and inflation concerns weighed on sentiment. Gold dipped 0.6% to $3,319 after a record high, as Powell’s stagflation warning tempered its rally. Despite the pullback, the uptrend remains intact. The Coindesk Indices, which tracks the broader crypto market, are up by 0.77%, with Bitcoin and Ether rising 0.64% and 0.72%, respectively, over the past 24 hours. Trade these markets and more with up to 500x leverage on Bybit MT5 using this 

Today's top performer is PYTH, up 10.1%, following the launch of Pyth Entropy for secure on-chain random number generation by Soneium.

Pyth Network (PYTH),  is a blockchain oracle system that delivers real-time crypto price data to blockchains, enabling smart contracts to react to market changes. Soneium 

 Pyth Entropy, a tool for securely generating random numbers on-chain. Two apps, HandsNFT AI and 2p2e, are already utilizing Pyth Entropy to create unpredictable and engaging experiences.

Check out the latest prices, charts, and data of 

Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) has approved a new Ethereum ETF with staking capabilities, allowing institutional investors to earn staking rewards. This approval follows recent changes to local laws, with China Asset Management (ChinaAMC) partnering with OSL Digital Securities to launch the ETF by May 15. The ETF will offer exposure to Ethereum staking, transforming it from a passive investment into an active participant in the Ethereum network. The staking process is powered by Kiln, with OSL providing custody and insurance services. The rewards will contribute to the ETF's net asset value, benefiting shareholders.

Yesterday, Bitcoin spot ETFs saw $25.9M in inflows, all from non-GBTC funds, while GBTC recorded no flow.

" and a points campaign called Drops, where users can earn points—potentially leading to an airdrop—by engaging with Linera content on X. To join, sign up on 

, complete tasks like joining Discord and interacting on X, then enter the campaign. Keep engaging to earn more points, but avoid spamming.

Beginner

1.png

Hong Kong approves Ethereum ETF with staking rewards, boosting institutional participation

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.

US president Donald Trump’s tariff policies are influencing both crypto and US equities. Last week, BTC and the S&P 500 rallied due to a 90-day pause in reciprocal tariffs (excluding China). Equities are slightly below their April 9 highs, while BTC is holding above $83K. Its implied volatility term structure has normalized, and the volatility skew has improved from last week’s bias toward out-of-the-money puts, though it hasn't fully shifted toward calls.

Please check out the report’s highlights.

Tariff pause briefly brings back trading volume

Since our last report, open interest surged on Apr 9, 2025, as crypto spot prices rose after President Trump’s temporary tariff pause, accompanied by a nearly $10B increase in trade volumes. However, trade volumes have since returned to mid-March levels, and open interest has declined from the April 9 highs. The initial price spike indicates the tariff pause surprised the markets, but the subsequent pullback reflects concerns over remaining tariffs.

After being inverted for much of April due to trade policy shocks and macro headwinds, BTC’s term structure has disinverted, with front-end volatility dropping significantly this week. Call and put volumes have been balanced, with calls slightly exceeding puts most days. Apr 9, 2025, reflected mixed market sentiment, as both call and put volumes rose, but puts were higher overall. Open interest remains greater in calls, and has increased slightly since last week, reaching its highest level for the month (more than double from the beginning of April).

Despite a rally on Apr 9, 2025 that brought ETH close to $1.7K, traders sought downside protection, leading to higher volumes in put contracts as compared to calls. Since then, ETHUSDT options volumes have declined, but open interest remains strongly weighted toward calls with later expirations, which have increased since last week. After being inverted for much of April, ETH’s term structure of volatility has flattened, with volatility compressing around the 70% mark across tenors.

block-scholes-x-bybit-report.jpeg

Bybit X Block Scholes crypto derivatives analytics report (Apr 16, 2025): Bitcoin put bias has moderated, but not yet shifted to calls

KiloEx (KILO) is a user-friendly DEX for perpetuals trading, offering high leverage, rewards, LSTfi integration and a robust multi-chain ecosystem.

 trading is one of the most lucrative areas for cryptocurrency enthusiasts if you know how to navigate the sometimes complex world of these contracts. Unlike standard futures, perpetual futures contracts have no expiration date, allowing traders to hold onto their positions as long as they prefer. You only exit a crypto perpetual (or “perp”) contract when you feel it’s the best time to execute your long or short trade. The lack of an expiration period makes these contracts attractive for traders.

Unfortunately, many crypto perpetual contract trading platforms are far from user-friendly. It seems like many perpetual crypto exchanges assume that only professional traders dabble in these contracts, and along with that assumption goes a second one — that these pros can navigate even the most complex user interfaces. As a result, finding a user-friendly perps platform is a challenge in the world of crypto trading.

 (DEX) that aims to change the status quo by providing a user-friendly environment for traders. Its platform also offers high leverage ratios, integration into the wider liquid staking token finance (LSTfi) ecosystem and generous reward programs for referrers and affiliates.

Thanks to its numerous benefits, this DEX caters to the needs of traders at all levels of expertise who are interested in crypto perpetuals. Operational since mid-2023, KiloEx launched its native token, KILO, in March 2025 to further enhance its platform's reward, staking and governance mechanisms.

 (BNB) that specializes in crypto perpetual futures trading.

 The platform prides itself on offering a user-friendly interface, high 

 ratios of up to 100x, multi-token vaults with generous APYs and a number of reward programs for referrers and affiliates.

Co-founded by Joey Ni (CEO) and Charles Gong (COO), KiloEx was originally launched on BNB Chain's mainnet in June 2023. As of mid-April 2025, the platform has additionally expanded its service coverage to five 

 (B2). This coverage allows KiloEx to access the ecosystems of three leading blockchain platforms — 

Manta, Base and Taiko are Ethereum-focused Layer 2 solutions, while opBNB is an efficient and low-cost optimistic rollup for the BNB Chain, while B

 is a platform linked to Bitcoin that acts as a major Bitcoin DeFi (BTCFi) enabler.

Because it’s a BNB-native platform, KiloEx's industry footprint is most notable within this blockchain's broader ecosystem. In fact, as Apr 17, 2025, KiloEx is the top DEX on the opBNB network by 

Using Layer 2 chains allows KiloEx to offer its users fast and low-cost transactions, which isn't always possible on a typical Layer 1 network. It's true that BNB Chain, the primary Layer 1 used by KiloEx, generally has much lower gas fees than Ethereum, the industry's leading 

 chain that’s notorious for its exorbitant costs. However, KiloEx's partner Layer 2 networks help drive costs and transaction times even lower. BNB Chain's current average gas fee is slightly over $0.10, while the opBNB Layer 2 rollup's comparable fee is only about $0.005.

In 2024, the platform introduced one of its most innovative features — the 

, which allows liquidity providers to stake multiple assets to earn high yields. That same year, KiloEx significantly expanded its partnership network, becoming an active player in the LSTFi ecosystem. LSTFi is a new stream within the DeFi industry that allows you to use 

 (LSTs) on various protocols for additional yield.

Having solidified its market presence in 2024, the project launched its native token, KILO, in March 2025. However, in mid-April 2025, KiloEx 

 and halted trading on April 15 as a risk management measure, pending investigation of the damage.

The Hybrid Vault is among the most innovative features offered by KiloEx. Essentially, it acts similarly to liquidity pools on other exchanges. Liquidity providers can contribute their crypto funds to the vault to support trading activity on the DEX and earn interest on their contributions, based on the fees earned by the protocol.

You can contribute a mix of coins to a KiloEx vault. Supported assets include 

Depending upon trading activity and the mix of coins contributed, you can earn APYs as high as 30%, making KiloEx one of the most lucrative choices for liquidity providers in this niche.

KiloEx uses a health factor calculation for this type of vault to keep your funds and the entire ecosystem safe. Based on the health factor score of your contribution to the vault, your funds could be liquidated if their value drops dangerously low.

Discounts are also offered for fixed-term deposits for established assets, such as USDT and USDC. Withdrawals for the fixed deposits are processed upon maturity, while all other withdrawals are processed within one to three "epochs," with each epoch on the platform lasting about three days. Thus, depending upon your contributed funds, you’ll wait anywhere from three to nine days to receive your crypto back.

The KiloEx platform also runs a generous referral program under which you can earn rewards for referring your friends to the platform. The amount you earn depends upon the trading volumes generated by the people whom you’ve referred. Additionally, your referees to the DEX can also benefit from fee rebates, again depending upon the volume of trade they generate.

There’s a tiered system, comprising nine levels, based on which you and your friends earn commissions and rebates. Under this system, even those referred traders whose monthly volume is at the lowest level (below $5,000) can still benefit from 5% rebates, while you also earn a 10% commission.

The table below shows the structure of this referral system with percentages for commission and rebates based on monthly trading volumes.

KiloEx offers an affiliate program for key opinion leaders (KOLs) with a certain level of social media following and influence in the crypto market. KOLs may apply to join the program by filling out an application, which is then considered by the project team within 48 hours.

To qualify for affiliate status, a KOL must have: 

Approved affiliates are provided a link to the platform, and are encouraged to invite their followers to trade on the KiloEx. If they invite at least five followers who trade at sufficient levels, the affiliates can start earning their commission. KOLs can earn up to 55% commission, depending upon the referred followers' trading activity.

KiloEx’s native utility token, KILO, is a 

 asset launched on BNB Chain. It’s used on the platform for governance, fee discounts on trades, rewards via 

, liquidity provision incentives and staking.

KILO is a supply-capped asset, with a maximum and total supply of 1 billion. The token’s supply allocation shares are shown in the chart below.

xKILO is an escrowed version of the KILO token. You can convert KILO to xKILO at a fixed rate of 1:1. The primary utility of xKILO is to provide boosted liquidity provision, which makes it possible to receive staking rewards. By locking xKILO on the platform, you can access special discounts and other benefits reserved for VIP-level users. Holding xKILO also grants you governance power to vote and influence the platform's future direction.

Unlike KILO, xKILO is nontransferable and isn’t tradable on the secondary market. The only ways to obtain xKILO are either to buy it with KILO or receive it via airdrops.

Platform users can earn points to qualify for KILO airdrops. Typically, you accumulate points by trading, depositing funds, referring others to the DEX, checking in to the platform and completing other specified eligible activities.

The project’s initial airdrop, Genesis Season, had an eligibility snapshot taken back in July 2024. Under the currently running airdrop campaign, Pioneer Season, users can earn points to receive KILO tokens for 180 days past the token generation event (TGE) in late March 2025 (i.e., until late September 2025).

Additionally, you can earn KILO tokens on Bybit simply by participating in the 

 event and holding BNB in your account. Every day at various random times, Bybit will take snapshots of your BNB holdings in your Funding and Unified Trading Accounts to calculate the number of KILO tokens you’re eligible for. The campaign will run through Apr 25, 2025, 11:59PM UTC, and you’ll have your share of KILO airdropped seven days after this date.

 market as a swap pair with USDT. If you don't have a Bybit account, you can easily 

, and access opportunities across hundreds of trading pairs and crypto products on the exchange's Spot and Derivatives markets.

As of Apr 17, 2025, the KILO token is trading at $0.039, which is 76.2% lower than its ATH of $0.1648 on Mar 27, 2025, and 17.3% higher than its ATL of $0.03344 on Apr 12, 2025.

Long-term price forecasts for KILO are mostly bullish. CoinCodex 

 at $0.0387 in 2027 and then rise to $0.135 in 2030 while PricePredictions 

When it comes to perpetuals trading, both traditional 

 (CEXs) and DEXs have often struggled to offer an intuitive trading experience. In contrast, KiloEx has made user-friendliness a cornerstone of its operations. With KiloEx, you can enjoy a streamlined trading process, access market trends info for thorough research, get an overview of the cryptocurrency market and conduct other activities via an interface that’s designed for anyone, irrespective of their familiarity with decentralized trading.

The platform also boasts a diverse range of other benefits not easily found in the world of perpetuals-based cryptocurrency trading — generous leveraged trading options, trading fee discounts, lightning-fast trades, low trading fees and an innovative Hybrid Vault system. Many of these benefits are thanks to KiloEx's collaboration with several Layer 2 decentralized platforms, which provide the technical infrastructure to enable low costs and fast order processing.

If you’re a crypto perpetuals enthusiast, KiloEx is definitely a platform to peruse.

Intermediate

KiloEx.png

KiloEx (KILO): More than a DEX — a rewarding ecosystem

Blockchain

The popularity of cryptocurrency and blockchain has been growing exponentially, significantly increasing the number of users and transactions. This has caused infrastructural bottlenecks for blockchain network operations. To achieve mainstream adoption, the industry needs to look for solutions to resolve its scalability issues in order to cater to the burgeoning numbers of users, transactions and data.

Two of the main solutions employed by the industry include Layer 1 and Layer 2:

In this article, we’ll be exploring the 

, and how to help blockchains achieve scalability. 

 refers to the conundrum of a blockchain simultaneously achieving the following three characteristics:

It’s argued that any system can only achieve two out of the three characteristics, forcing it to give up on one.

Typically, blockchains have struggled with the blockchain trilemma. Let’s take a look at a few prominent examples.

Ethereum is decentralized and highly secure, with approximately 

 validators. It’s nearly impossible to attack Ethereum’s blockchain, as it would require an attacker 

 of the validators in order to compromise the network. However, this comes with a trade-off in scalability, which is why Ethereum’s network fees rocket during times of high activity.

In contrast to Ethereum, BNB Chain only allows a maximum of 

. It’s therefore apparent that BNB Chain isn’t decentralized. However, this allows it to achieve a high degree of security and scalability. 

The definition of the word “scalability” varies from expert to expert. However, at its core,

 refers to a system’s capacity to offer a rich experience to every user, irrespective of the total number of users at any given time.

 refers to the number of transactions a system handles per second. While companies/payment channels like Visa process nearly 20,000 

 with the VisaNet electronic payment network, Bitcoin’s

The difference in capacity might be shocking, but there’s a simple explanation behind it. Bitcoin adopts a decentralized system, while VisaNet runs on a centralized system. The former utilizes more processing power and time to safeguard the privacy of its users. Each data transaction has to go through multiple steps, including acceptance, mining, distribution, and validation by a node network.

With cryptocurrency expected to become an imperative force in the business world, blockchain developers are trying to increase the scope of blockchain handling. By creating blockchain layers and optimizing Layer 2 scaling, they want to speed up processing times and ramp up the number of TPS.

Let’s use Ethereum as an example. In blockchain technology, a consensus mechanism is a fault-tolerant system that allows agreements on a single network state in distributed nodes. These

 ensure that all nodes agree on transactions and are synchronized. This makes the Ethereum chain immensely difficult to overwrite or attack.

Due to the stability and security of Ethereum, the

 began, leading individuals to create cryptocurrencies and decentralized applications (

) on the blockchain. Consequently, there was an influx of users and an uptick in the number of transactions made on Ethereum. As the system became clogged, the transaction fee — or 

 paid to parties processing transactions on Ethereum’s network — increased.

When a blockchain network is clogged, pending transactions end up in the memory pool and take more time to process. To tackle this, miners start prioritizing transactions that have higher gas prices in order to confirm them. This further raises the minimum cost required to make a transaction.

The cycle of price increment gets to a point where gas fees skyrocket, making the situation worse for everyone. Layer 2 scaling is aimed at providing a solution to this problem and lowering the costs of transactions.

Layer 1s are the primary blockchain network on which other blockchains and DApps are built on. They are able to support transactions and operations that are conducted on the blockchain. To improve scalability, a Layer 1 will have to make direct changes to the blockchain’s code or architecture. Examples include enhancing the speed of block confirmation or increasing the data-containing capacity of a block.

Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and Solana are the most prominent Layer 1s.

Let’s take a look at some Layer 1 scaling solutions.

 (PoW). Even though a PoW system is highly secure, it can be slow. This is because it requires substantial computing power to solve cryptographic algorithms. Ethereum started off with a PoW consensus mechanism, which led to severe network congestion when a large number of users came onto the Ethereum network.

Ethereum has since switched over to use a 

, and now processes and validates new blocks by consensus from the network. This switch has allowed Ethereum to change its speed from 

. This is achieved while retaining decentralization and security.

Layer 1 scaling solutions are usually introduced by the blockchain’s development team. Forking a chain means upgrading or adjusting a blockchain. There are 2 types of forks: 

Soft forks are architectural changes that are compatible with the existing blockchain. On the other hand, hard forks are changes to the blockchain architecture that is distinctly different from the existing one. 

, which helped increase the network’s performance from approximately 1,600 transactions per block to 3,000.

Whereas larger changes to be made to the blockchain, such as increasing Bitcoin’s block size to 8MB, requires a hard fork. This will create two versions of Bitcoin, one updated and one old network.

 is one of the scaling techniques that divides large transaction sets into smaller data sets known as "shards". The network processes these network shards concurrently in parallel, enabling sequential work on several transactions rather than having a network process each and every transaction sequentially. This is a faster and more effective mechanism.

Furthermore, rather than keeping a copy of the blockchain in its entirety, each network node is assigned to a certain shard. Individual shards exchange addresses, balances, and general states utilizing cross-shard communication protocols while also providing proofs to the mainchain.

Examples of blockchains that have integrated sharding are Ziliqa and Tezos.

However, it should be noted that Sharding is experimental and no Layer 1 has successfully implemented it yet.

A Layer 2 enhances the scalability and efficiency of a blockchain protocol by running on top of it. It will enable transactions away from Layer 1 using an external, parallel network.

To finish the transaction results, Layer 2s takes bundles of transactions from the main chain, processes them on their behalf, and then bundles the transactions back into Layer 1. The Layer 1 blockchain becomes less crowded and ultimately more scalable by abstracting the majority of data processing to auxiliary architecture.

Prominent examples of Layer 2s are Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, zkSync and Bitcoin’s Lightning Network.

Here are some of the Layer 2 scaling solutions.

Nesting is one of the Layer 2 scaling solutions whereby a blockchain protocol houses other blockchains within or on top. The nested blockchain architecture typically involves a main blockchain that sets rules and parameters for a broader network, while executions are undertaken on an interconnected web of secondary chains.

The nested chain comprises both parent and child chains. The parent chain will delegate to the child chains to perform the transaction. The transactions will be carried out by the child chains, who will then inform the parent chain of the outcome. The parent chain will provide Layer 1 with the outcome once the transactions have been completed. 

Unless it becomes required for dispute resolution, the underlying base blockchain does not participate in the network operations of nested chains. Because everyone is working together, it is one of the greatest scaling methods and is quicker. The division of labor in this paradigm lessens the processing load on the mainchain, improving scalability tremendously.

An example of this is the OMG Plasma Project, which acts as a Layer 2 blockchain for Ethereum to ensure cheaper and quicker transactions.

Two-way communication between a blockchain and off-chain transactional channels can be facilitated through a state channel. The state channel is essentially a network-adjacent resource which carries out activities using a 

 mechanism, without the need for validation by nodes of the Layer 1.

Transactions can be executed without having to submit transaction data to Layer 1. Once the transactions have been completed, the final state of the channel will be sent to Layer 1 for validation. This mechanism allows to improve transaction speed and increases the overall throughput of the network.

State channels feature unmatched speed and privacy. Without the need to route through third parties such as miners, state channels are one of the best existing scaling solutions.

Both Raiden Network on Ethereum and Lightning Network on Bitcoin are examples of state channels. Both of these use state channels that are executed by hashed timelock contracts (HTLCs). While the Lightning Network allows users to complete a lot of microtransactions in a short amount of time, the Raiden will also let users run smart contracts through their channels.

State channels like Lightning Network are also entirely secure, since only the participants know about the transactions. On the flip side, the Ethereum Layer 1 blockchain records all transactions in a publicly auditable ledger.

Large batch transactions frequently use sidechains, which are distinct blockchain networks with their own sets of validators (and consensus mechanisms), which coexist with a Layer 1 to improve its speed and scalability.

With a sidechain design, the Layer 1’s main responsibilities are to uphold general security, validate batch transaction records, and settle conflicts. Once the sidechain has finished processing transactions from the main chain, assets are locked. Also, the majority of sidechains have a federation or other independent third party that double-checks to see if there are any irregularities in the activities between the mainnet and the sidechain. Either smart contracts or a collection of humans can make up the federation.

There are two main difference between sidechains and state channels:

Blockchain Layer 1 vs. Layer 2: The Essentials

Compete for 2,500 USDT Every Week

Earn Points by Completing Tasks

Event Rules

Register now and get 10 points

Write/Reply Comments (0/5)

Publish an Article (0/5)

Share an Article on Social Media (0/5)

Like an Article (0/5)

Read an Article (0/5)

Weekly Leaderboard