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

Explainers

web3

Altcoins

REPUBLIK is a web3 social media app that aims to use blockchain technology and smart contracts to monetize the content interaction economy on social media. 

Social media has enhanced our interactions, opened avenues to faster information access and generated opportunities for creators to interact with audiences and make money even by referring friends.

However, current social media platforms use monetization models whereby many creators can’t adequately monetize engagement, limiting them to a negligible and uncertain income stream from advertising only. 

REPUBLIK aims to revolutionize the social media industry by offering a blockchain-powered application with lucrative on-platform tools that allow creators to monetize their content through a rewards system and interactions with their audiences.

 social media application launched in 2022 that aims to use 

 to monetize the content interaction economy on social media. 

As a social media platform, it may be similar to well-known social sites, such as TikTok and Instagram, in terms of serving social connection functions. But what sets REPUBLIK apart is its promise of a better empowerment strategy, whereby creators can earn better rewards and keep a larger share of their earnings while retaining a stake in the platform. 

We can call REPUBLIK the home of the interaction economy. On this pioneering social networking site, every interaction is rewarded — and as a content creator, that can be your fanbase, a like, a comment or a repost.

The end goal is to make content creation lucrative enough to form a creator middle class, with the same chance to succeed as the current top few creators — who have resources and existing audiences.

Overall, REPUBLIK values its users’ time and effort and rewards them at every level of engagement. That said, top creators with REPUBLIK also don’t have to rely on advertising and undervalued brand partnerships created outside their social platforms. Through REPUBLIK’s virtual economy, users can monetize content and interactions with their audiences directly on the platform.

Here are the direct benefits a creator can expect after joining REPUBLIK:

REPUBLIK doesn’t just ensure that creators get a fair share of the revenue. As a community growth model, REPUBLIK aims to let all participants on the platform earn from their contributions in a gamified manner. Content creators use RPK to mint their own Creator Tokens. Interested users will then use RPK to buy the Creator Tokens to vote for their favorite creators, helping them level up and gain more exposure. In return, users are rewarded more XP for their time spent interacting with the creators. The participants then earn RPK in the form of 

 based on their total accumulated XP tokens.

Additionally, creators have other ways to directly earn RPK, such as providing premium content through various content monetization tools like paywalled content, pay-per-view access, or a subscription-based model where users have to pay RPK to access the services.

XP are the tokens you receive as rewards for your contributions to the REPUBLIK platform. The more interactions you make, the more XP you gain. 

Gaining XP allows you to attain levels that open up access to extra privileges, exclusive content and events, and an honor badge that reflects your contribution to the app and qualifies you to earn more XP through multipliers.

A small disclaimer here: Your XP earnings will be deducted if you remain inactive for seven days, and further deductions are made for continued inactivity (until your balance falls to zero). 

RPK is the native token of the REPUBLIK ecosystem. This 

 powers the transactions and governance functions, which include:

Currently, a user gaining XP qualifies for weekly airdrops that include the RPK tokens, which are awarded based on the total XP balance.

Users who wish to withdraw their RPK will bear the 

, but the team promises to make the token multi-chain in the near future and keep the fees affordable.

REPUBLIK is the new platform for people looking to earn more for their creative work, and to hold a stake in a social media network. Current social platforms not only provide limited profitable pathways for the majority of creators, but also set the rates and keep most of the earnings. 

On REPUBLIK, every action is rewarded; you keep everything you earn, making it a highly attractive platform for anyone looking to get a slice of the social media pie. Its platform provides familiar creator monetization tools, such as subscriptions, premium user profiles and paywall content to unlock more profit-making opportunities. Additionally, the team has created beneficial multi-sectoral partnerships to ensure like-minded people view your content. 

REPUBLIK’s future road map looks promising. Apart from the recent RPK token airdrops, the platform is also looking to increase its presence on major exchanges for active trading, as well as integrating 

 on the platform to provide additional storage for user tokens directly on the application. 

If you believe in the ethos of fair on-platform content and interaction monetization, REPUBLIK is a worthy investment you may want to consider. With a stellar development team consisting of industry-leading moguls, your investment is in safe hands.

However, blockchain projects are known for their volatility. It’s prudent to 

 and/or seek expert financial advice before making any investment decision. 

Are you ready to join REPUBLIK today? Buy RPK as a Spot pair (

! From Nov 14 through Nov 28, 2023, there are two events you can join. The first is exclusively for new Bybit users. Sign up with Bybit and make a minimum deposit of 100 USDT worth of RPK, or deposit 100 USDT to buy RPK to earn from a 4,000,000 RPK prize pool. The second event is open to all: You can win from an 800,000 RPK prize pool by trading at least 200 USDT worth of RPK to become part of the coolest social media platform.

REPUBLIK is the new frontier for creator empowerment. The social media project is committed to lowering the barriers that dwindle the creator economy on social media. On this blockchain-supported network, you can monetize content and time spent interacting with your audiences to make returns commensurate with your effort.

So, will it gather traction and become the next explosive social media app, or is it just a trend that will come and go? Only time will tell.

REPUBLIK (RPK): Game-Like Leveling and Earning With Social Media

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards

Grab Up to 5,000 USDT in Rewards