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

Horizen is a blockchain network designed with a cross-chain transfer protocol that supports the development of real-world applications. Learn more here.

 has evolved dramatically since it was first conceptualized more than four decades ago. There are hundreds of blockchains running today, and more are in development. While they generally embrace established technology, one network continues to push the envelope to advance the technology further. By doing so, it strives to enhance blockchain’s real-world utility.

The Horizen blockchain ecosystem utilizes an advanced protocol, the ZEN token and a series of sidechains that collectively support the development of advanced decentralized applications (

). The team’s developers and engineers have created a platform that’s based on core concepts like transparency, privacy and advancing blockchain technology. With its modular protocol, the Horizen ecosystem acts as a truth engine. The core blockchain ensures that sidechains have followed predetermined rules. Modularization allows for extensive scalability, flexibility and creativity in the development of applications.

When Horizen was originally introduced in May 2017, it was known as ZenCash. On Jun 2, 2018, the network endured a 

 totaling more than 33,000 ZEN. The project’s developers improved the consensus mechanism, which ultimately increased the difficulty for future attackers. Changes implemented at that time have since been adopted by other blockchain projects. The project was renamed Horizen in August 2018 to preempt confusion that the project may simply be a cryptocurrency, while it also eliminated confusion with the unrelated 

Horizen has been developed to progressively advance blockchain technology by concentrating on research and development. With a focus on 

 technology, the network strives to introduce products that have real-world utility. Both its engineering and research and development teams have built and are continuing to refine a permissionless blockchain network with optimized utility. Horizen’s additional goals are to incentivize its stakeholders and create a funding model that’s sustainable.

Horizen is a zero-knowledge–enabled network that functions with an advanced consensus protocol. Its 

 to support a growing number of DApps. Developers have access to a wide range of advanced tools to support their projects, and can easily create and launch their own tokens using Horizen’s 

 is a sidechain/smart contract platform that’s compatible with 

. Secure nodes and super nodes use a decentralized system and support the many applications on the sidechains.

The Horizen blockchain is an advanced network that continues to be enhanced by its engineers. The team has already developed numerous features that allow for greater adoption, improved security and enhanced application development. 

As Horizen’s cross-chain transfer protocol, 

, supports a next-level experience for developers. Specifically, it allows them to build sidechains and features a modular design that facilitates the development of advanced, 

 applications that have real-world utility. Zendoo is designed to be private, transparent, 

 support Horizen’s extensive sidechain ecosystem. While Horizen originally used a centralized system, it transitioned to a decentralized system to address computational challenges. Secure node operators must 

 must stake 500 ZEN. In addition, super node operators function with half the response time required of secure node operators, and they have fixed computation and storage requirements. Horizen’s 

 for contributing to the network in this way.

 is the official Horizen wallet. This desktop wallet can be downloaded on Mac, Windows and Linux. It offers 

, a memo field and a transparent address 

. Horizen also works with third-party wallets, including Abra, CoolWallet, D’CENT Wallet, DDT Wallet, Guarda Wallet, Ledger, Metal Pay and several others.

 is to improve the knowledge of Horizen’s users. It offers free articles designed for those of all skill and knowledge levels to benefit from. Users can choose from a wide range of core topics. Through links within the articles, users can then explore related topics to further expand their knowledge of various concepts.

, or HCC, is responsible for the governance of the Horizon blockchain. It links together all of the Horizen ecosystem participants. The HCC serves as a stepping stone for the creation of a sustainable and decentralized governing body. In addition to addressing governance, the HCC evaluates 

 as ZenCash in 2017, features like ZenChat, the 

, wallets and a node system were established. Over the next several years, the project was renamed Horizen, the 

 was launched, the cross-chain transfer protocol was developed and numerous other aspects of the platform were introduced. Looking forward, Horizen Global and the Horizen DAO will launch. The cross-chain transfer protocol will offer enhanced 

 with other SDKs, more zero-knowledge tools will be introduced and additional improvements will be made. Due to the project’s own research and its focus on progressing blockchain technology, improvements are likely to continue well into the future.

ZEN is the native token of the Horizen network. This 

 must be staked by users who wish to build nodes. It’s also used to pay gas fees. In addition, mining profits are paid in ZEN tokens. 

The finite total supply of ZEN tokens is 21 million, and the circulating supply is over 14 million. 

As of Aug 28, 2023, the current price of ZEN is $6.75, down 4.7% over the last 24 hours. The current market cap is $94.6 million, with a 24-hour trading volume of over $5.5 million, which represents an increase of 146.3% over the past day.

The highest price paid for ZEN was $165.92 on May 8, 2021, so the current price is down 95.95% from that high. In contrast, the all-time low was $3.26 on Oct 17, 2019, or 106.02% below today’s price.

Many price sources have analyzed ZEN, and predict that its price will increase over the next several years. DigitalCoinPrice projects that 

 could reach $15.39 by the end of this year and $32.24 by the end of 2026, with the potential to reach $38.51 in 2028, $73.65 in 2030 and $136.76 in 2032.

Whether you want to stake ZEN to be a secure node operator, or you need to pay fees as an application developer using the Horizen network, you need convenient access to new ZEN tokens. Bybit offers the

 that’s properly funded. If you haven’t yet created an account, you can begin the 

Horizen stands out from other blockchain projects in several key areas. While many projects launch with the intent to offer the latest technologies in different ways for users’ benefits, the Horizen blockchain has consistently operated with the goal of progressively innovating in this key area. Since the project launched in 2017, its engineers have worked tirelessly to move the dial. With the 

 launching soon, the Horizen community will be able to voice their preferences for the direction of the project going forward. Because of its steady focus on research and development, Horizen isn’t likely to stagnate.

Numerous respected sources have analyzed large volumes of data to predict Horizen’s future price. While the actual estimates vary, many anticipate a consistently upward trend over the next decade. However, each investor should 

 before making any type of financial investment.

Horizen is a zero-knowledge-enabled network that supports developers, blockchain enthusiasts and investors. With Horizen’s commitment to focusing on continued research and future development, this may be a blockchain project that deserves a deeper look.

Horizen (ZEN): A Secure and Anonymous Blockchain

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards