As 2025 begins, the cryptocurrency market is rebounding from a tumultuous 2024 characterized by regulatory concerns and whale profit-taking.

As 2025 begins, the cryptocurrency market is rebounding from a tumultuous 2024 characterized by regulatory concerns and 

 profit-taking. Bitcoin is struggling to break the psychological barrier of $100,000, with traders anxiously awaiting the impact on crypto policies of Donald Trump’s inauguration. Despite the excitement surrounding Trump's pro-crypto stance, apprehensions linger regarding potential market corrections reminiscent of previous downturns. 

Social media discussions have cooled, reflecting a decline in euphoria, while many projects have seen reductions in market cap, except for a few like Sui and Bitget Token. Traders are increasingly focused on the implications of upcoming legislation and the Federal Reserve's interest rate decisions.

On-chain analytics indicate a notable decrease in whale activity over the past two weeks, with wallets holding from 10,000 to 100,000 BTC reducing transactions by 14%. This downturn contrasts sharply with the increased whale activity in late 2024 that fueled Bitcoin's rally past $100,000.

In contrast, smaller retail investors have increased their activity, with wallets holding less than 1 BTC boosting transaction counts by 22%. The number of non-empty wallets has also started to rise in the new year. However, wallets with less than 1 Bitcoin have collectively lost 41.9K BTC since October 11, 2025, signaling potential bullish sentiment as their selling contributes to a rising market cap.

Although these smaller wallets show slight signs of accumulation post-Christmas, they’ve only added a total of 945 BTC. Retail traders are largely on the sidelines, and in order to sustain a bull market, a return to the late-2024 selling trend would be beneficial.

Bitcoin Decouples From Traditional Assets

Recent data reveals a notable decoupling of Bitcoin from traditional markets, with the correlation coefficient dropping significantly. This suggests that Bitcoin may be establishing itself as a distinct asset class, driven more by regulatory developments and institutional interest than macroeconomic factors. Whale activity has cooled, while smaller investors have increased their transaction counts, indicating a shift in market dynamics. 

Despite a general decline in trading volumes across cryptocurrencies and altcoins, there are signs that traders might find opportunities as average trader returns enter “opportunity zones.” The current landscape calls for close monitoring of whale behavior and market sentiment in order to navigate the complexities ahead.

Advanced

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Market Braces For Trump’s Inauguration; Whales Are HODLing While Retails Take Profits

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.

The new year saw BTC's spot price briefly surpass $100K, but this surge faded after the U.S. JOLTS report dampened expectations for interest rate cuts by the Fed in 2025. As a result, risk-on assets, including crypto, lost their early gains. Unlike in previous surges, derivatives market sentiment hasn’t strongly supported this move. Notably, realized volatility in crypto trading was around 20 points lower than the implied volatility from a one-month BTC option, marking the largest volatility premium since the 2024 U.S. elections without a clear event risk.

Lower trade volumes contributed to the drop in realized volatility in perpetuals, although open interest has remained stable. In options, despite a steep volatility term structure, short-tenor implied volatility is significantly higher than the realized volatility observed over the past week.

Please check out the report’s highlights.

Sluggish Trading Activity and Low Volatility

Perpetual swap markets have experienced a significant drop in liquidity over the winter break, with trading volumes declining not just on weekends and holidays but throughout December. As noted previously, lower trade volumes often lead to reduced volatility in spot prices, in evidence during this period. Realized volatility has mirrored the decreased trading activity. Meanwhile, open interest has remained stable compared to pre-December expiration levels, indicating minimal significant hedging activity in the perpetual swap markets.

Large Gap Between 30-D Implied Volatility and 7-D Realized Volatility

ETH's options markets are showing a clear preference for call options, while BTC's open interest is more balanced after the expiration of December’s contracts. Similar to ETH, BTC’s term structure has steepened in the new year, driven by a decline in short-tenor volatility and a moderate rise in longer expirations. The gap between implied and realized volatility is at its widest since the November 2024 U.S. elections, suggesting that hedging using options is very expensive.

Open Interest of ETH Calls Larger Than Puts

Put contracts continue to dominate ETH’s options trading volumes, although there has been an increase in call contracts since December’s large expiration. However, the new year has seen a notable decline in realized volatility. In response, options traders have steepened the volatility term structure, yet short-tenor volatility remains over 15 points (at a 30-day tenor) above realized volatility. This divergence is the largest since the pre-election period, when the volatility premium was linked to political uncertainty. Now, without a specific event, traders seem to be anticipating a potential spike in volatility at any moment.

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Bybit X Block Scholes Crypto Derivatives Analytics Report (Jan 8, 2025): Market Braces for Volatility Ahead of Trump’s Inauguration

Gnosis (GNO) is Ethereum's most decentralized sidechain with 200K+ validators, xDAI gas fees, and scalable solutions for mainstream web3 adoption.

 (ETH) blockchain has suffered from poor scalability and high costs caused primarily by network congestion. Many solutions — mainly in the form of 

 rollups and sidechains — have emerged in recent years to address Ethereum's performance and cost inefficiencies. Many of these have managed to offer viable alternatives in the form of much better transaction processing times and considerably lower gas fees. However, plenty of these platforms suffer from limited decentralization due to the low number of validator nodes. In the case of rollups using a single sequencer node, a critical part of rollup architecture, there are serious concerns about extreme forms of operational centralization.

Thankfully, there is a project within the Ethereum ecosystem that has truly dedicated itself to the blockchain ethos of maximum decentralization. Gnosis is one of the oldest and most established Ethereum sidechains, and boasts a highly decentralized and reliable network of over 200,000 validators. It started as a 

 (DApp) on Ethereum, focused on prediction markets, but merged in 2022 with the xDAI sidechain to form a new entity, Gnosis Chain. The merger ushered in a new era for the unified project, which has become probably the most decentralized among all blockchain platforms within the wider Ethereum ecosystem, excluding Ethereum itself, of course.

Additionally, the Gnosis sidechain features a benefit that even Ethereum 

 can't match — gas fees on the network are charged in xDAI, a 

 indirectly pegged to the U.S. dollar, delivering greater cost stability for users and developers.

In this article, we conduct an in-depth examination of Gnosis, the leader of blockchain decentralization in the Ethereum universe.

 (GNO) is an Ethereum sidechain that offers low transaction costs, high scalability and gas fees denominated in a USD-pegged stablecoin.

 It boasts the highest degree of decentralization — as measured by the number of validators — among all Ethereum-linked sidechains and Layer 2 solutions. Among the most established and oldest blockchain solutions, Gnosis is designed to tackle Ethereum's heroically unyielding cost and performance challenges.

The original Gnosis project, now referred to as Gnosis 1.0, was conceptualized in 2015 as a prediction market platform. It was launched as an Ethereum DApp, and was owned by the Consensys blockchain development company. In 2017, Gnosis transitioned into an independent entity and expanded its focus to building decentralized infrastructure solutions for Ethereum. This marked the beginning of the project's second major stage, Gnosis 2.0.

In parallel with the original Gnosis, another early Ethereum-focused blockchain project, the xDAI Chain, was developing a scalable Ethereum sidechain that used a stablecoin for gas fee payments. xDAI and Gnosis announced a merger in 2021, with the new project branded the Gnosis Chain. The two projects merged on a technical level in December 2022. Over the next several years, Gnosis Chain has firmly established itself as a leading Ethereum sidechain, offering low costs and great scalability while running an extensive, community-driven network of more than 200,000 validators.

In early 2024, the now-unified project announced its next major stage, Gnosis 3.0, which aims to leverage the sidechain's superior technical properties and massive decentralized network in order to power mainstream 

 applications across different sectors, particularly in areas like payments, financial infrastructure and 

Although Gnosis has moved away from its niche focus on prediction markets, it maintains DApps dedicated to this specialized sphere. In fact, Gnosis continues to be viewed as the leading platform specializing in this area, with its GNO token holding the top position by market cap in the crypto industry’s prediction markets category.

 forms the infrastructural backbone of the entire Gnosis ecosystem. Its sidechain is anchored to Ethereum and features five-second block-confirmation times and low gas fees. For instance, in December 2024, the network registered average gas fees of around $0.04.

Gnosis Chain has inherited most of the properties of the original xDAI chain. It uses a stablecoin cryptocurrency, xDAI, that’s pegged to 

 (DAI), which in turn is soft-pegged to the U.S. dollar. As such, xDAI is indirectly pegged to the greenback. The use of a fiat-pegged stablecoin provides greater stability and certainty for users and developers utilizing the Gnosis Chain.

The chain's more than 200,000 validators (as of the start of 2025) make Gnosis the absolute leader in decentralization among all Ethereum-linked sidechains, Layer 2 rollups and similar platforms. The highly decentralized nature of the chain helps ensure great levels of security, transparency and trust in the platform.

Gnosis Chain currently features support for around 200 DApps across areas as diverse as blockchain analytics, 

 (NFTs), prediction markets, wallet solutions and more. DeFi-related apps — such as payment protocols, liquidity managers and permissionless 

 (DEX) platforms — as well as blockchain infrastructure projects, such as oracles, data exchange protocols and decentralized development tool kits — are the niches most prominently featured on the chain.

 (EVM)–compatible blockchain that uses a 

 (PoS) block validation model to secure network consensus, and a dual-token model to power its operations. Validators on the chain secure the right to process transaction blocks by 

 GNO tokens. Gnosis doesn't support stake delegation, however, so if you’d like to stake GNO without running a validator node, you can use external staking or 

 platforms that support the token. Examples include StakeWise (SWISE) and Chorus One.

In order to run a validator node and support Gnosis Chain block processing, you’ll need to download the requisite software and stake at least 1 GNO (around $264 as of Jan 7, 2025). The software needed to operate a validator node on Gnosis is pretty much the same as that used for Ethereum validation, with some minor modifications. This modest minimum staking requirement, and software setup nearly identical to Ethereum's, are significant reasons why Gnosis has an enormous network of over 200,000 validators.

Validators can choose to run a node either via the cloud or using their own hardware. However, the Gnosis project explicitly recommends the latter option to ensure maximum security, censorship resistance and credible neutrality.

While validator nodes stake funds and earn rewards in GNO tokens, gas fees for transactions on the network are paid in another cryptocurrency, xDAI, which is commonly acquired with MakerDAO's Dai stablecoin via a dedicated bridging solution — the 

In addition to its 200,000-strong validator community and around 200 DApps operating on its platform, the Gnosis ecosystem also includes several entities fundamental to the project's evolution and success — GnosisDAO, Gnosis Studios, GnosisVC and Gnosis Labs.

GnosisDAO is the platform's decentralized governance entity, powered by the holders of the GNO governance token. The DAO was originally created in 2020 to fully decentralize control of the platform and turn it into a project governed entirely by its user community. GnosisDAO uses a multi-stage governance process, whereby discussions are initiated and considered via the platform's online forum. Discussions can revolve around technical topics, protocol rules, DAO grant allocations and more.

If an issue being discussed gains enough traction, a forum poll can be created, whose users can then cast their votes. If this forum poll generates enough support votes, the process moves to the final stage, in which GNO holders vote to either approve or reject the proposed action.

Gnosis Studios is a product innovation lab created by the platform to develop and incubate promising web3 applications and infrastructure solutions. Among the solutions launched via Gnosis Studios is a decentralized payment protocol, Gnosis Pay, and a personal currency exchange platform, Circles.

Successful spin-offs of Gnosis Studios include the 

GnosisVC is a venture capital (VC) fund set up by the Gnosis project to invest in early-stage web3 projects, particularly in areas like financial services, 

 (RWAs) and blockchain infrastructure. GnosisVC boasts an extensive portfolio dating back to 2019. In 2020, one of the numerous projects the fund invested in was MakerDAO, a stalwart of the DeFi sector.

The fund's latest investments include projects such as the self-custodial wallet app Zeal, the 

 aggregator Electron. This is only a small subset of the web3 initiatives GnosisVC added to its portfolio throughout 2024. Per information on Gnosis's website, the VC fund has invested in more than a dozen projects in 2024 alone, and dozens of projects within the past five years.

Gnosis Labs is a development hub in which experimental web3 projects are first tested, iterated and improved before decisions are made on their future potential. The hub focuses heavily on 

 (AI) initiatives, and is primarily designed to foster innovation and breakthrough discoveries at the junction of AI and blockchain technologies.

To underscore its commitment to AI, Gnosis Labs has established a specialized division, Gnosis AI, for researching and developing projects in areas like agent-to-agent payments and smart prediction markets. Gnosis AI is a key initiative within the overall Gnosis 3.0 framework, a major evolutionary stage of the project designed to bring the platform to the mainstream web3 world.

. Validators stake GNO to secure the right to process transaction blocks on Gnosis Chain, while the wider GNO holder community can take part in on-platform governance votes. As noted earlier, these votes represent the final step in a multi-stage governance process whereby proposed changes or improvements to the platform are first considered in the Gnosis forum, and may proceed to a final vote involving GNO token holders.

Originally, the GNO token was issued on Ethereum, with a total and maximum supply of 10 million. As such, GNO was designed as a 

In April 2022, the Gnosis governance community voted to reduce the token's total supply to 3 million GNO. This supply-capping feature remained in place after the supply reduction, and the maximum supply was also set at 3 million GNO.

As of Jan 9, 2025, the GNO token was trading at $253.10, or 60.7% lower than its ATH of $644.20 on Nov 8, 2021, and 3,580.5% higher than its ATL of $6.88 on Mar 13, 2020.

Long-term price forecasts for GNO are generally bullish.DigitalCoinPrice 

 of $835.83 in 2027 and $1,275.52 in 2030, while CoinCodex 

 to average $319.29 in 2027 and $1,199.07 in 2030.

Gnosis' vibrant community, founded in the early years of the DApp revolution, continues to grow, with its 200,000-strong validator army offering unmatched decentralization benefits to users and developers. Much of the Gnosis protocol's success over the years can be attributed to its eloquently designed dual-token model, with xDAI as a gas token and GNO as a staking token and the primary asset for community governance.

With a vast network of validators, stability delivered by its stablecoin-for-gas model and time-tested success on the market, the Gnosis project is unlikely to fade into obscurity any time soon — to say the least!

Intermediate

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Gnosis (GNO): Bridging Web3 Tech With Mainstream Usability

Revolut has partnered with Pyth Network to contribute its trusted price data to the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, marking a significant step in bridging traditional and decentralized finance. 

The S&P 500 rose 0.16% as the bond market stabilized following a US Treasury sale. However, US stock futures dipped Thursday after the Federal Reserve highlighted increased inflation risks, potentially slowing policy easing. Coindesk Indices, an index measuring broader cryptocurrency market performance was down by 2.68%, with Bitcoin and Ether dropping by 2.63% and 2.08%, respectively in the past 24 hours.

Today's top performer is GAS, which surged 31.6% following the launch of Escape the Matrix, Neo's AI-powered blockchain game with a $30K+ prize pool.

Neo (GAS), launched in 2014, is a blockchain enabling a smart economy with digitized assets, smart contracts, and dBFT consensus, driving decentralized app development and ecosystem growth. Neo’s "

" is an AI-driven blockchain game on Neo X, offering a $30,000+ prize pool. Players solve challenges using multi-AI agent interactions, with fees contributing to the prize pool. Running from January 9-14, 2025, the first winner claims 80% of the prize, while 20% is donated to Freysa. A Neo X wallet and GAS tokens are required to play.

Check Out the Latest Prices, Charts, and Data of 

 to contribute its trusted price data to the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, marking a significant step in bridging traditional and decentralized finance. As a publisher for Pyth, Revolut will share its digital asset price data to enhance transparency and reliability in digital asset markets, benefiting both DeFi applications and Web3 capital markets. This collaboration allows Revolut to expand its crypto operations while Pyth’s oracle technology enables financial institutions to engage with the Web3 space securely. The partnership paves the way for more transparent, fair, and accessible financial markets.

Yesterday, BTC Spot ETF data showed a total flow of -$444.8 million, with GBTC at -$8.9 million and Non-GBTC at -$435.9 million.

SoSoValue, an AI-powered cryptocurrency research platform, has launched its 

 where users can earn points (Exp) by completing simple tasks. The program is live following SoSoValue’s $15 million Series A funding. To join, sign up with an invite code, and complete tasks like following on X, posting, and retweeting. Additional points can be earned by connecting accounts, installing apps, and checking in daily.

Beginner

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Revolut Partners with Pyth Network to Bridge Traditional and Decentralized Finance

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