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

Blockchain

A large part of music fandom is about getting to know the people behind it. With Corite, you can now get up-close-and-personal with your favorite artists.

 is a blockchain-based platform created to help music artists build more successful, fulfilling careers. Powered by fans and artists to fund and promote music through a 

(P2E) concept, Corite's aim is to transform and eventually conquer the music industry.

Thanks to the P2E business model it employs, both content creators (musicians) and consumers (fans) are rewarded on Corite. Whether musician or fan, Corite users are rewarded with CO tokens, 

, and exclusive experiences for adding value to the community, platform, and the music Corite seeks to promote.

Recently, the platform partnered with Norwegian DJ/renowned producer 

. Walker, who has more than 115 million followers across his social platforms, wants to help Corite break out of the traditional "record label" model to create a new digital music market.

To help you better understand Corite, let’s take a look at how it works, its key features, and the pros and cons involved.

Launched in 2018, Corite is a project funded by 

of Sweden. The platform aims to help fans invest directly in their favorite artists, become a part of the creative process, and earn a portion of streaming royalties.

Corite was built around the CO token and four core concepts:

The CO platform is also beneficial for artists as well. For decades, independent artists/small brands could not fully capitalize on their existing fan bases and compete with major recording labels. With Corite, they can now place their music on all major streaming platforms online, including 

The entire project is scheduled to take place in multiple stages. The current incarnation of Corite is used to bridge the gap between the old and new platforms. At the moment, the team's plan is mainly to attract the crypto crowd and 

 enthusiasts. In the long term, however, Corite's goal is to mass market the platform to the general public in order to reach even more people.

In May 2021, Corite founders took a huge step in the right direction by

, a company run by music industry legends

 also acquired a minority stake in Corite — a move that will surely help Corite expand into U.S. territory.

The CO token has been made to power the Corite platform. The creators designed CO to be used on the Corite platform only.

As a single-platform token, it will create the single largest 

 for the platform. CO will also have real-world benefits, such as getting artist’s music onto Spotify and Apple Music.

But that’s not all: CO has been designed for multiple purposes, including:

Back in July 2021, Corite founders announced that they had completed a 

. They used the opportunity to launch a concept called “Fan Power,” achieved through a partnership with 

Corite uses a fan participation business model, which allows fans not only to participate in the launch of a single or album, but also to receive a portion of future profits. Here's how Corite works:

With backers covering the production and marketing costs, artists can focus on delivering their vision without making compromises along the way. This way, Corite will be able to help new artists with marketing distribution using 

When a track or project is completed, Corite will help the artist get it featured on all of the major streaming platforms. Revenue made from these tracks will be redistributed to backers and artists on the platform.

Corite’s platform offers many gamification tools to make the interaction between artists and potential backers easier and more fun. Noteworthy features of the platform include:

Outside the music industry, the P2E model isn't anything new. The strategy has allowed many video game companies to offer financial rewards to anyone who adds value to a particular gaming world. This model will be perfect for the industry, and will be used to strengthen the connection between artists and fans.

Fans help artists fund and promote their music, while artists reward fans with generous awards and interact with them directly. Fans are encouraged to participate in three ways:

With Corite, backers can earn Fan Power tokens by participating in activities that promote their artists, and by engaging with other community members. Creating Spotify and Apple Music playlists, sharing campaigns on social media, and voting for your favorite artists can net you some of these tokens. (Editor’s note: At the time of this writing, not much information is available about Fan Tokens.)

Early investors will have a chance to listen to early demos, attend exclusive festivals, and even hang out backstage through VIP packages, The CO Backstage area is where fans will be able to buy digital selfies and participate in promotional activities of their favorite artists.

The demand for the CO token is hotwired into its 

To get early access to fan-funding campaigns, backers will need to own CO tokens. Additionally, the more albums and songs sold in a presale, the more attention the particular artist gets. All of that — as well as many other use cases, such as buying/selling NFTs, trading social tokens, and going through 

 challenges — will surely result in a significant amount of tokens being taken out of the market. In turn, this will affect the token price positively.

The user-friendly interface, fun rewards, and high level of hype surrounding the Corite platform will attract investors.

In under three years, Corite has become one of the hottest blockchain-based music platforms around. However, as with any project, there are cons associated with Corite as well. Here are some things to consider.

The music industry is notoriously difficult to break into. With Corite, however, independent artists finally have a platform that can help them get the exposure they need to succeed.

Crowdfunding campaigns are a great way for artists to raise money for their projects. However, they can be difficult to organize and promote. Corite has made it easier than ever to launch a successful crowdfunding campaign.

Corite is all about boosting fan engagement. The platform makes it easy for fans to connect with their favorite artists (e.g., up-and-coming musicians) and to support them in a direct manner.

While music fans will love having the power to influence the industry, virtually anyone — from casual fans to adventurous investors — can benefit from investing in Corite. The platform has plenty of potential and is sure to see continued growth in the coming years.

As of April 2022, CO has yet to be listed on any mainstream crypto exchange. The project is still in its early stages, and likely grapples with a number of issues which will only surface with prolonged testing.

 at this time, you wouldn’t be able to find any sort of road map for the project. While this isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker, it does make it difficult to gauge the project's progress.

With all of this in mind, we have to ask ourselves: Is Corite a good investment?

The slightly longer answer: It depends on your personal investment strategy.

If you're the type of investor who likes music, wants to support independent artists, and is looking for a way to diversify your portfolio, Corite is definitely a platform worth considering.

On the other hand, if you're risk-averse and are looking for a quick return on your investment, you might want to wait until the platform has been around for a few more years, and more reviews/information on Corite appear on the internet.

Although the Corite platform has made its online presence felt over the past few months, at the moment, CO has yet to be listed on any of the major online exchanges. At the time of this writing, we have no confirmed information about any upcoming initial coin offering (

that has the potential to revolutionize the music industry.

Although still in its early stages, Corite looks like a promising project: It can help generate additional revenue streams for artists, assist newcomers in breaking into the global music streaming market, and more. The cherry on top? Internationally acclaimed music artist Alan Walker seems to have faith in the platform (and he knows his “stuff”).

If you're looking for a way to support budding artists, and are willing to take on some risk, Corite is a platform worth checking out.

Corite (CO): A Musical Union of Artists and Fans

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards