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

Fascinated by Gary Vaynerchuk's go-getter branding? Enter the world of Gary Vee with his VeeFriends utility NFTs.

With the success of VeeFriends, world-famous entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk has once again struck gold as his 

. Thanks to it crossing this milestone, it's safe to say Gary Vee's unique take on 

 have certainly taken the NFT market by storm.

Curious as to why everyone has been talking about VeeFriends for the past year? Read on as we elaborate upon the 

 (NFT) project, its unique use cases and the overall inspiration for VeeFriends NFTs. Also, stick around to learn more about the VeeFriends ecosystem which includes VeeFriends Series 2, Book Games NFTs and VeeFriends Mini Drops.

GaryVee created his collection as a way to give life to his business and creative passions by building a community for them. The Series 1 collection includes 1,242 tokens that GaryVee kept, and 9,013 NFTs that were openly sold. In the VeeFriends Series 2 collection that debuted recently, there are 251 characters and a total of 55,555 tokens. While 231 of the characters are the same as Series 1, there are 15 new ones. Additionally, there were VeeFriends Mini Drops and Book Games NFT projects.

Like other PFP NFT projects, GaryVee NFTs come with utility. Membership benefits offer unique real-world experiences and more. Because of the usefulness and innovation of the VeeFriends NFT community structure, the project has helped reshape the way investors and the public understand the accessibility of utilities and community benefits. During the first 24 hours after the collection

This program was developed by GaryVee to help people starting their own NFT projects. The PLP's goal is to give other developers a starting point for community building. To do this,

 give away some of their tokens to the VeeFriends community. By having them donate tokens to VeeFriends investors, GaryVee has brought a tangible benefit to them and other new project developers by helping increase project developers' visibility in an established community of NFT investors.

In addition to VeeCon, GaryVee NFTs come with some other utilities that connect community members directly with the NFT project's developer virtually or in person. For the few token holders with real-world connection benefits, they may go to garage sales, play golf or have dinner with Gary Vaynerchuk. These benefits will be explained more in the next section.

 is $133.5 million. Now, it’s time to dig deeper into the Series 1 token structure. There are 10,255 Series 1 tokens categorized by admission, gift and access.

There are several types of access tokens. Access token categories include one-to-one, group, competition and scholarship. Of the access tokens, 90 are tied to in-person access, and 210 come with virtual access.

For group access, there are 165 tokens. Holders can spend time with other VeeFriends investors or GaryVee. This is a breakdown of the VeeFriends group access tokens:

There are a total of 108 one-to-one access tokens, of which many are unique. For example, there’s only one Garage Salin Yale token. There is one Workout Wolf and one Podcast Panther token. Tokens for courtside seats at a sporting event, a wine shopping spree and other intriguing one-on-one experiences with GaryVee are available. There are multiple tokens for FaceTime calls with him, and five tokens exist that give holders unlimited access to events where GaryVee is the keynote speaker.

Competition access tokens are capped at 22, offering holders a chance to compete with GaryVee in a game. There are tokens for bowling, basketball, checkers and more. While a few games have several quantities of tokens, other rarer ones are only tied to one token. Five Sorcerer Scholarship tokens exist. To acquire these tokens, people must apply for them. Token holders receive coaching and mentoring directly from Gary Vaynerchuk.

There are a total of 555 Gift Goat tokens. These GaryVee NFTs offer experiences that are designed by Gary Vee and the team. In addition to the special experience-related gift, holders have access to VeeCon through 2024.

These tokens also come with a three-year access pass to VeeCon. With a total of 9,400 tokens, this is the largest category of VeeFriends NFTs. The tokens have various levels of collectability and rarity. For each character, there are 40 tokens in different rarity levels. The rarest of each is “Epic,” with only two, and then there are very rare, rare, limited and core levels that gradually increase in numbers. “Spectaculars” are the rarest since there’s only one of each. The Spectaculars are one-of-one art tokens, including  Diamond, Lava, Hologram, Bubble Gum and Gold.

Since the VeeFriends ecosystem includes many tokens that are redeemable for experiences, it makes sense that expansion of it was inevitable. With the high demand and value placed on the original Series 1 collection, growth potential appeared substantial. GaryVee announced the expansion of the VeeFriends universe earlier in the year. There are a few key components, which are VeeFriends Series 2 NFTs, Book Games NFTs and VeeFriends Mini Drops.

Instead of releasing all the NFTs at once, the project released them on various dates in April 2022. A total of 32,000 Book Games NFT holders had the potential to participate in minting VeeFriends Series 2 NFTs (if they were on the Friends List). Secondary trading saw increased prices for several VeeFriends Series 2 NFTs. 

Book Games NFTs primarily act as assets that users burn for other rewards. These include blue-chip NFTs and rare collectible cards. However, the biggest news was that burning Book Games NFTs granted participants access to VeeFriends Series 2 NFTs as part of the limited-time minting project. 

For Series 1 GaryVee NFTs, as of late July floor price is 7.25 ETH, which is a slight

 from the previous week. While the floor price fluctuates somewhat, it has grown overall. The current price is similar to the floor price at the beginning of January 2022 for the original VeeFriends NFT collection. However, there was a spike just above 18 ETH in March of that year. Many recent sales of original GaryVee NFTs were for between 6 ETH and 18 ETH on OpenSea.

Currently, the floor price of VeeFriends Mini Drops is 0.22 ETH. On OpenSea, recent Mini Drops sales went for between 0.2 ETH and 0.4 ETH. The current floor price of

 NFTs is 0.24 ETH, and recent OpenSea sales were for between 0.1 ETH and 0.3 ETH. For VeeFriends Series 2 NFTs, the current floor price is 0.46 ETH. Most of the recent sales on OpenSea were for between 0.4 and 0.5 ETH.

Based on the price movements of VeeFriends, most appear to be good investments with additional potential. For instance, the Series 1 token holder who minted and sold the Adaptable Alien Series 2 NFT made over $123,000 from utilizing a Series 1 privilege. If there are future collections developed with similar utilities, investors may reap extra benefits. 

With real-world opportunities and experiences, GaryVee NFTs are valuable purchases. Their unique community and utilities are driving forces behind their popularity, which is likely to continue growing as the world of NFTs keeps expanding. Investors are also excited to see which future utilities may be offered with GaryVee NFTs.

VeeFriends: Entering the World of Gary Vee With Utility NFTs

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards