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.

Beginner

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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.

Advanced

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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

In this article, Bybit Learn breaks down how the RFC meme coin was launched by the 'ifindretard' community, what’s driving its popularity and how to trade the RFC meme coin on Bybit.  

RFC quickly became one of the most talked-about and actively traded meme coins in early April 2025. In this article, we’ll break down how the token started, what’s driving its popularity and show you how to trade RFC on Bybit.  

Meme coins have always relied on humor to capture a wide audience and RFC is no different. The coin is inspired by the 

 X account that posts right-leaning, political and social posts on the platform. The account quickly became popular and gained over 718,000 followers as of mid-April 2025. 

 the launch of RFC, a Solana-based meme coin with a core mission of becoming the definitive meme coin for their community. The project aims to counter the prevalence of rug pulls and scams and create a token that is fair and community-centric.

The RFC token was launched on Mar 24, 2025, on the 

 platform. Within a few hours of its launch, the token graduated from the bonding curve and was placed in the liquidity pool. The initial post from the @ifindretards account is likely the major cause of the parabolic rise in the price of the token on the pump.fun platform. 

In the following days, the popularity of RFC experienced a significant surge, largely fueled by an enthusiastic community that rallied around the project. The coin’s 

 on Solana and its allocation of 96% of the supply to the public attracted a lot of attention from the meme coin community. Such community-centric characteristics quickly boosted the coin’s profile. According to 

, over 216 KOLs have mentioned the coin, with 124 being bullish and only five being bearish. This positive momentum was soon reflected in the price surge of RFC.

Following the graduation from the bonding curve, the price momentum continued and the coin reached a peak market cap of around $8 million, but quickly retraced to $1.2 million the next day. Over the next few days, the coin consolidated in the $1 million to $5 million range. 

On Mar 31, 2025, the coin broke out of this range and witnessed a 2-week staggering rally that saw the market cap rise as high as $138 million on Apr 14, 2025. This is a 25x increase from the first day’s close of $5.5 million. The coin has since retraced slightly, and as of Apr 15, it’s currently trading at a valuation of around $91 million market cap. 

The total supply of RFC is fixed at 1 billion tokens. The distribution of these tokens is heavily weighted towards the public, with 96% allocated for a public fair launch. Notably, only 4% of the total supply was allocated to the developer wallet, and the project explicitly states that there were no airdrops or presales.

If you’re interested in riding the RFC wave, you can go long or short on the token with up to 20x leverage on Bybit through its 

 RFCUSDT perpetual contract. Whether you're bullish or bearish, you can dive into the action and start trading the 

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RFC: Trending meme coin with a strong community

DeFi

Altcoins

Balancer is a leading DeFi app that acts as a token swap platform, a liquidity mining source, and an efficient liquidity protocol for integration into other DeFi protocols.

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 (DEXs) and liquidity providers have been at the forefront of the 

 (DeFi) industry and its adoption by the crypto mainstream. The most standard model for these protocols is based on swap-pair pools with two tokens. Balancer (BAL) is a unique protocol that has moved to an innovative model of 

 and pools by hosting pools with multi-token support. In this article, we cover this leading DeFi protocol in-depth.

 (AMM) is a model of trading used by DEXs that has been lauded as a more efficient trading system than the order book model. The 

 trading system matches buyers and sellers of assets, in this case, cryptocurrencies. If there is no suitable seller or buyer for your order, you might have to wait for some time. This introduces an element of inefficiency into the whole trading process.

Under the AMM model, market players called 

 add the necessary funds to swap-pair pools, incentivized by a share of the revenues from the 

 in the pool. This ensures that each swap pair has enough liquidity to meet the demands of traders. The traders, both sellers and buyers, then transact with the swap pool instead of dealing with another trader.

The AMM trading model has been a massive improvement over the order book system. It has underpinned the operations of many of the leading DEXs, such as Uniswap (UNI), Curve (CRV), SushiSwap (SUSHI), PancakeSwap (CAKE) and more. In its standard form, the AMM model is based on liquidity pools funded by a pair of cryptocurrencies.

 is a leading DeFi app that acts as a token swap platform, a 

 source, and an efficient liquidity protocol for integration into other DeFi protocols. Balancer runs on Ethereum (ETH), Polygon (MATIC), Arbitrum, Fantom (FTM), and Optimism. 

Balancer has revolutionized DeFi by first introducing the concept of multi-token pools. On top of the standard setup with two tokens per pool, Balancer also offers liquidity pools based on multiple coins. The maximum number of tokens per Balancer pool can be eight in standard pools and 50 in a special variety of pools called Managed Pools. The multi-token pool setup lets liquidity providers earn yield from a pool that resembles a multi-asset fund product, e.g., an index fund or a mutual fund.

Balancer allows traders to use the current swap pairs and pools as well as set up their own pools. This gives you the freedom to design your own crypto index product.

Balancer uses algorithmic rebalancing of fees and rates based on the trading activity and the composition of the pools. Such smart pools help the platform offer the best rates and fees.

As mentioned, Balancer is based on three key services – coin swaps, liquidity pool mining, and DeFi development/integrations. One key service is coin and token swaps. Balancer offers a big variety of liquidity pools, making swap transactions on the platform cost-efficient. While Balancer’s swap fees depend on each specific pool and can range widely, the lowest swap fee available on the platform is only 0.0001%. This rate is probably the most affordable you might find in the DeFi industry, at least among the leading protocols.

The second key service on Balancer is liquidity mining. In this respect, Balancer offers opportunities unmatched by other DeFi protocols. The majority of the DeFi platforms offer you the standard two-token pools, while Balancer gives you yield farming opportunities based on multi-token pools. You may also create your own pools to generate custom liquidity sources. When traders swap cryptos involving your pool’s assets, you can earn a share of the fees.

The third key target group of Balancer is 

. Balancer, thanks to its numerous liquidity pools and low fees, is a great tool to integrate with other DeFi protocols. Balancer offers blockchain developers the ability to programmatically create tokens, liquidity pools, and data oracles to source swap pair rates.

Balancer’s initial version, V1, was launched in early 2020. The protocol underwent a major upgrade in April 2021 and V2 was launched. The second version of Balancer introduced a few technical and functional improvements such as its single-vault system. 

 that manage the crypto assets held in Balancer pools. The Vaults are critical to Balancer’s working mechanism, which is based on the dynamic rebalancing of the vaults to maintain trading and liquidity mining efficiency and flexibility. Version 2 of Balancer introduced the concept of a single Vault to manage a set of assets in a pool.

 are multi-asset liquidity sources that underpin all the swapping and liquidity provision/mining operations on the platform. As noted earlier, Balancer is not a standard cookie-cutter DEX with just two-token pools. The platform features a variety of pools. Currently, Balancer has the following types of liquidity pools:

Weighted Pools are the simplest and most standard pool types on Balancer. They use Balancer’s 

 which allows for coin swaps between tokens that may not share a price correlation, e.g., DAI/WETH. Weighted Pools also allow users to configure their pools according to their preferred token counts and weightings, a feature not offered in most pools. 

, a methodology based on Curve’s StableSwap, which allows for swaps between assets that have the same price (i.e. stablecoins like DAI/USDT/USDC), or a high price correlation (i.e. assets that are pegged to popular cryptos like WBTC or WETH).

Liquidity Bootstrapped Pools (LBPs) help to maintain stable prices and a fair market with their dynamic token weighting and time change, which are triggered by Balancer’s Weighted Math equation combined with time-dependent weights.

Managed Pools are custom-designed non-standard pools that give users maximum flexibility in terms of the pool’s composition, features, and management. Earlier, we noted that Balancer is unique in the sense that it provides standard pools with up to eight crypto assets per pool. However, when it comes to the customized managed pools, the maximum token limitation is 50. That’s right – under the Managed Pool option, Balancer can handle as many as 50 crypto assets per pool!

Featuring LBPs’ time-based Weighted Math formula, Managed Pools are typically reserved for fund managers who need to create complex “fund-like” products from a big variety of crypto assets. 

Asset Managers help to manage the balances of Managed Pools, and invest the assets elsewhere while facilitating trade within the pools. There are options for pools without the function of Asset Managers in case of malicious Asset Managers who may cause a fund loss with bad investment.

Boosted Pools are an innovative functionality of Balancer V2 designed for interaction between Balancer pools and external liquidity platforms to create deeper liquidity and higher capital efficiency. Since Boosted Pools are designed to interact with an external source, they are based on smart contracts that are outside of the Balancer’s control. This is by design to ensure the integrity of the system.

Balancer’s most prominent Boosted Pool system has been launched 

 (AAVE), one of the leading lending and borrowing protocols in the DeFi industry. The Aave-linked asset manager allows Balancer users to earn yield from liquidity sources on Aave. The partnership between Aave and Balancer was launched in December 2021. Balancer has announced that this Boosted Pool product is only the beginning of a wider network of partnerships planned with external liquidity providers.

When you provide liquidity to Balancer’s pools, you can earn rewards in BAL tokens, the platform’s native cryptocurrency. You may claim the tokens via the 

’s claim section. The tokens, besides serving as crypto rewards, also act as voting rights on the platform.

Balancer vs. Uniswap vs. Curve: Which Is Better?

Balancer is among the leading DEX platforms in the industry, consistently ranking among the top 10 DEXs. It is often compared to other leading DEXs, particularly the first AMM-based DEX, 

. While Uniswap offers a very wide range of crypto pairs for swapping, Curve focuses on stablecoin pairs. Unlike these two exchanges, Balancer has the advantage of offering pools with several, or even many in the case of Managed Pools, cryptos. 

Depending on the pool, the swap fees on Balancer might also be better. For instance, the standard swap fee is 0.3% on Uniswap, 0.04% on Curve, and can be as low as 0.0001% on Balancer. However, before using the Balancer for swaps, check the swap rate applicable to each particular pair since the fees may vary widely. Theoretically, depending on the trading activity and the rebalancing algorithm, the swap fee might be as high as 10%.

Balancer Governance Token (BAL) And Governance

. Within the platform’s original rules, BAL was used primarily as a governance token. Holders of BAL could also vote on key matters concerning the protocol and its products. BAL was earned by providing liquidity to the protocol’s pools.

These functionalities of BAL have now been replaced by the new veBAL token. As per Balancer’s 

, veBAL is now the token to be used for liquidity mining and governance participation on the platform. To earn veBAL, you will need to provide liquidity to the Balancer’s key 80/20 BAL/WETH pool.

BAL was first launched in June 2020 at around $15. The token’s best performance was recorded during the earlier months of 2021. In May 2021, BAL reached an all-time high of $74.45. Since then, the token has largely been on a downtrend pattern, though it has mostly stabilized around the $5 range in recent months. As of the time of writing (Jan 18, 2023), BAL trades at $6.76.

Balancer is a crypto with very solid potential and represents a good investment. There are several factors why we believe in positive future returns for BAL:

The GALA token can be bought directly on its platform and on top centralized exchanges such as Bybit. On Bybit, you can trade BAL as a USDT perpetual (

Balancer is not a standardized platform just for coin swaps. It offers liquidity mining opportunities that resemble those used by fund products in the financial industry. Additionally, its algorithmic rebalancing of fees and rates allows it to offer some of the most competitive fees among DEXs. All these benefits of the platform will ensure that Balancer stays among the top DeFi protocols in 2023 and beyond. The protocol’s relevance will also be boosted by the demand from traders that are looking for ever more sophisticated 

What Is Balancer Crypto: Pools With Endless Flexibility

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