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

Metaverse

DeFi

BurgerCities is a blockchain-enabled play-to-earn (P2E) MetaFi ecosystem evolved from BurgerSwap, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform for token swapping .

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The crypto space is constantly evolving. Since blockchain technology is still in its nascent stages, projects need to identify and leverage niches that are driving market demand in the industry. One such area is the 

That said, BurgerCities, which has evolved from BurgerSwap to tap into the tokenized infrastructure of a virtual economy, has identified the immense potential of the metaverse.

Let’s look at BurgerCities and its transition into the metaverse.

 (P2E) MetaFi ecosystem, powered by BNB Chain. 

It evolved from BurgerSwap, a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform launched in 2020 to facilitate the swapping of tokens.

BurgerCities aims to offer a wholesome web3 experience by integrating 

 into the larger metaverse realm. In essence, users can socialize, game, and participate in other daily activities in a virtual world while still enjoying DeFi functionalities, such as token swaps and 

 a notch higher by creating a game that mixes numerous economic models with an emphasis on game enjoyment through improved playability. The platform’s gameplay includes NFT-themed heroes, daily gaming tasks, in-game trading of NFT items, and tactical combat.

Built on BNB Chain, BurgerCities can thrive on the platform’s ecosystem, which facilitates the smooth and efficient creation of NFTs. As a 

, BURGER is the glue that holds various features of BurgerCities together.

BurgerCities combines metaverse-themed gameplay with DeFi and NFTs. Following its evolution from BurgerSwap, the project’s ecosystem now consists of the following features.

The various aspects of BurgerCities’ play-to-earn structure are:

BurgerCities gameplay is powered by Heroes, which are utility-enabled NFTs with diverse use cases on the platform. First, you can breed Heroes through the summon function. The rarity of a Hero, divided into four levels from lowest to highest — Green, Blue, Purple and Orange — is partially determined by the two Heroes used for breeding.

Hero NFTs can also be used for exploration to earn gold and in-game items, which can then be used to craft props via the game’s manufacturing feature. You can also participate in player vs. player (PvP) and player vs. environment (PvE) battles with your Heroes.

You can own and develop metaverse land in BurgerCities. At the moment, only core plot scenarios are available on the platform. However, in the future, virtual land will also be usable for free building style and interior decoration.

BurgerCities metaverse land will have a high degree of editability, in order to customize one’s virtual home to their preference. Landowners can rent out their buildings or provide advertising space to obtain an income.

You can also simulate a business scenario in the BurgerCities metaverse and practice in-game decision-making. Unlike traditional simulation games, BurgerCities lets you rent, upgrade and trade NFTs, with a chance to earn rewards outside the game.

Black Market is a platform on BurgerCities that lets players quickly and cheaply trade or swap digital assets. Black Market uses aggregation protocols for swapping tokens at highly competitive rates.

BurgerCities’ aggregation protocols source liquidity across different 

 (DEXs) and provide the best rates for swapping tokens, all on a single dashboard. The cheapest rates may involve swapping your tokens within several protocols into different currencies before you obtain your desired token.

For example, if you want to swap your BURGER tokens to USDT via an aggregation protocol, the cheapest way (as shown below) requires you to first swap BURGER to WBNB (Wrapped BNB) before exchanging it for USDT.

BurgerCities’ Energy Plant is a section on the platform that allows you to become a liquidity provider. To participate, you’ll need to choose two tokens and deposit them into the pool. By providing liquidity, you’ll receive BURGER tokens as rewards.

Central Bank Dual-Mining Revenue Aggregator

Another critical building block of BurgerCities is the Central Bank, which is a single-coin dual-mining revenue aggregator. Through the Central Bank, you can maximize your staking rewards when the revenue aggregator matches the staking assets with high-yield pools. The rewards are distributed in 

, is the native token for the BurgerCities ecosystem. It’s used to power various operations, including staking, liquidity mining and play-to-earn games. 

There’s a total supply of 61,000,000 BURGER tokens, with a current circulating supply of 33,259,000 (as of December 14, 2022). Of the total supply, 50% was allocated for incentives, 10% to the team, 10% to financing, 10% to operations and liquidity management and 20% to the platform’s future growth and ecological development.

BurgerCities (BurgerSwap) Price Prediction

The BURGER token’s price didn’t gain much traction after its launch on the BurgerSwap DEX in September 2020. It traded at around $0.70 until the beginning of 2021, when the token rallied from $0.63 the last day of January, pumping over 20X within two weeks to hit $12.08 on February 20, 2021.

After a slight price correction and sideways movement for a few months with some local highs, BURGER experienced a phenomenal rise toward the end of April. On April 25, BURGER’s price spiked from $3.63 to hit its all-time high one week later of $27.57 on May 3, 2021.

In the weeks that followed, BURGER’s price dropped significantly, touching its lowest point that year at $3.18 on July 21, 2021. BURGER stagnated toward the end of 2021, when most tokens were pumping. The token’s downtrend continued in 2022, dropping it further in mid-May to $0.70 following the Terra LUNA crash.

 on May 21, BURGER experienced a slight rise in July but quickly dropped back to the $0.50–$0.70 range, where it’s remained since.

Several price prediction analysts have offered their outlooks for BURGER. 

 remain bearish about BURGER’s price in the short term, but believe it could hit $17.15 by 2025.

However, DigitalCoinPrice has a much slower price outlook for BURGER.

, BURGER will trade at $2.79 in 2025 and reach a maximum price of $8.74 by 2030.

BurgerCities' venture into the metaverse could bear fruit over time, as the market demand for such a product is rapidly 

. That said, the crypto market is highly volatile, and it’s important to do your own research before investing in any token.

BurgerCities takes a unique approach of using MetaFi to integrate DeFi and NFTs into the metaverse. They’re building a MetaFi/DEX platform where users can participate in daily gameplay and still access DeFi products, such as staking and swapping tokens. This is a strategic move that helps BurgerCities stand out in the larger metaverse space.

As BurgerCities aligns itself with various partners to provide utility to its users, its platform continues to actively make a mark on the gaming, NFT and DeFi space. Time will tell whether BurgerCities' evolution from BurgerSwap exerts a significant impact on the crypto space.

BurgerCities: The MetaFi Evolution of BurgerSwap

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards