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.

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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.

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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.

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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

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

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Blockchain

Jack Dorsey has announced his plans to develop a Web 5.0. Find out everything about it and discover why it will be much better than Web 3.0.

 in 1993, technological advancements have been developed and introduced for the purpose of improving the internet and providing people with a better user experience. 

Web 1.0 is notable for introducing technologies like the shopping cart and the ability to create static web pages. This era of the internet lasted from 1989–2005. Then came Web 2.0, which facilitated much more interactive features, as well as user-generated content. 

This guide explains what Web 5.0 is and why it's going to be better than Web 3.0.

Web 5.0 is meant to be a decentralized web platform that provides developers with the ability to create decentralized web applications with verifiable credentials and decentralized web nodes. The purpose of this platform is to reclaim control and ownership of user data.

Despite the fact that Web 5.0 remains in development, there are already clear indications of what this platform is going to be. At the moment, it's believed that Web 5.0 will be a combination of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0, and it will focus on creating a linked web that is not only intelligent, but also emotional. This means being able to communicate directly with its users, just as people can communicate with each other. 

Once it reaches its final form, Web 5.0 should be fully executing and highly powerful. The goal of this project is to create emotional interactions between computers and humans. At the same time, the project also seeks to give users total control over their identity and data. The status quo is such that the internet is neutral when it comes to emotions — since it can't identify how the user is feeling — and user data is owned by third parties. However, Web 5.0 should be transformational in this regard.

An example of a website that could be available with Web 5.0 is one that maps a person's emotions. When wearing headphones, users can interact with the content on the website, which will in turn interact with the person's emotions, perhaps via any identifiable changes in facial recognition.

Over the years, Dorsey has been at the forefront of many internet-based technologies, giving him a comprehensive understanding of how the web works and how it can be improved.

He has stated that users don't actually own this version of the internet, and that ownership is still tied to limited partnerships and venture capitalists. His belief is that Web 3.0 is still a centralized program with a slightly different label. Dorsey's bias that Web 3.0 is still centralized in some regards has led him to a vision of what can be achieved with Web 5.0.

 is a recently created platform that's considered to be the Bitcoin-focused subsidiary of Block, Inc. As mentioned previously, Dorsey has a vision for Web 5.0. It was announced in early June 2022 that TBD would be working on developing Web 5.0, the basis of which is built on Bitcoin’s foundations (see more below under 

The platform will also allow developers to create fantastic user experiences while also making sure that each user owns their data and identity. TBD believes that personal data and identity are currently owned by third parties, and that this ownership merely shifts to other third parties when it comes to Web 3.0.

While TBD has begun development on Web 5.0, their team expects development to be challenging because of the need to discard many assumptions of what decentralizing the internet actually means.

To better understand what Web 5.0 is, consider how virtual assistants are able to predict users’ needs by studying their behaviors. Even when there aren't many clues, virtual assistants can make accurate predictions of what users require. Web 5.0 is essentially a predictive virtual assistant on a much broader scale. This version of the internet will be able to interpret different pieces of information on much more complex levels, which means that these interpretations will use emotion as well as logic.

Keep in mind that Web 5.0 is also meant to focus much more on the individual when compared to Web 3.0. In theory, Web 5.0 should provide each user with a completely new and different experience. If it can perceive a person's emotions and create the appropriate response, then the interactions would vary from person to person. As advancements continue to be made with AI and technology as a whole, a complete picture of what Web 5.0 is should come into focus.

While Web 5.0 should have many features that will benefit users once it’s been fully developed and implemented, there are two core features currently of focus with this platform: The ability to control your identity, and the ability to own all of your data. With the current web, your identity and data are effectively owned by corporations and other third parties.

One of the main use cases for Web 5.0 involves being in control of your own identity. For example, let's say that Sarah has a digital wallet that's able to securely manage her data, authorizations and identity for external connections and apps. Sarah uses this wallet to enter her sign-in data to a non-centralized social media application.

Since this application has been connected with her identity, she won't need to go through the trouble of creating a profile. All of the posts, connections and relationships that are made with the app are stored on her decentralized web node. At this point, it's possible for Sarah to change applications whenever she wants — in which case her social persona would go with her.

Another use case of Web 5.0 involves owning your own data: Jake loves music, but hates that his personal data is locked with one vendor. This approach to personal data storage requires Jake to find the same songs and create the same playlists with every music app that he uses.

Even though these apps are currently vendor-locked, Web 5.0 makes it possible for Jake to store his data on a decentralized web node, which gives him the ability to provide each music app he uses with access to his preferences and settings. As such, his personalized music experience could be automatically added to every platform he accesses.

Even though Web 5.0 isn't fully formed at this point, there are already some clear pros and cons you might want to be aware of. 

The primary benefits associated with this platform include:

While there are many benefits of using this platform, there are also some potential downsides that include the following:

The key similarities between Web 5.0 and Web 3.0 include the following:

While these platforms share many features, there are also some key differences:

At first, users had access only to fully static web pages, which were stored on servers. The types of actions that users could perform were limited to reading news articles, writing and sending emails, and retrieving pages. There were only a few interactive features whic users could access with Web 1.0. It wasn't until the creation of online banking that interactive functionality gradually expanded.

As technology continued to develop, the Web 1.0 platform was growing and expanding to include additional interactive and dynamic features. Despite the inclusion of new features, Web 1.0 didn't allow for much user creation. In the early 21st century, Web 2.0 was developed and introduced. This version of the web was the mainstay until Web 3.0 became more widely adopted over the past few years.

Web 2.0 changed many of the assumptions that existed with Web 1.0. While web pages were static with Web 1.0, they became interactive and socially connected with the emergence of Web 2.0. User-generated content also became far more common. 

After the introduction of Web 2.0, many companies focused on creating and launching applications to bring large numbers of people onto their platforms. With this approach, companies were able to collect user data, which made it easier to monetize their users.

Web 2.0 can be viewed as a read/write network as well as a social web, both of which are interactive. The inclusion of user-generated content meant that users were able to operate software and develop content. These features made it possible for users to upload a video to YouTube, or interact with other users on Facebook.

With Web 3.0, applications are able to interpret data to create additional analyses and efficiencies. The innovations of Web 3.0 allow for features such as contextual search which, once fully implemented, will allow for:

While applications are able to execute functions and connect data without user input, Web 3.0 doesn't permit these applications to provide context or make complex decisions. This is where Web 5.0 becomes useful.

As mentioned previously, this version of the internet that's being developed by TBD will be based entirely around Bitcoin, which is mainly due to Jack Dorsey's support for Bitcoin and his belief that Bitcoin is the most secure decentralized network in the world. By relying solely on the Bitcoin blockchain, Web 5.0 won't need to use the various protocols and centralized blockchain networks on which Web 3.0 is based.

You may be wondering if Web 5.0 is really necessary. Based on everything that's been discussed and detailed in this article, there are some clear benefits associated with this version of the internet that aren't currently possible with the Web 3.0 version. For starters, Web 3.0 isn't fully decentralized.

According to Jack Dorsey, people don't fully own and control their identity and data with Web 3.0. At the moment, Web 5.0 should be viewed as an enhanced iteration of Web 3.0. While the advancements might not appear as notable as those adopted in the transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0, they should provide users with significant additional advantages.

Web 5.0: What It Is & Why It Will Be Better Than Web 3.0

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