Dubai, United Arab Emirates, March 17, 2026 - New analysis from the 2025 Crypto Quant Strategy Index Report, published by 1Token, identifies structural advantages at Bybit Institutional that translated into superior performance for neutral quant strategies during a turbulent market cycle. The Index aggregates performance data from 25 professional trading teams running over 50 distinct strategies and benchmarks results across three broad strategy families against the Nasdaq-100 and BTC.
The Index stresses that 2025 functioned as a full macro cycle for digital-asset markets, beginning with investor optimism tied to prospective Federal Reserve rate cuts and ending with the October flash crash and associated liquidity dislocations. Those events created repeated tests of execution, pricing and liquidity - conditions under which neutral strategies demonstrated particular resilience.
How the cycle played out
The report separates outcomes by strategy type and highlights contrasting behaviors across the year. Delta Neutral approaches delivered uninterrupted monthly gains across all 12 months of 2025, with monthly returns spanning 0.43% to 1.42% and a maximum drawdown of 0.80%. The Index attributes this steadiness to systematic time-value extraction via funding-rate differentials and basis opportunities that persisted despite the market stress.
Bybit Institutional’s Delta Neutral execution, as recorded in the Index, produced 9.48% returns and registered the lowest measured drawdown and volatility among major venues in the study. According to the report, that profile reflects the type of structural stability necessary for reliable systematic funding-rate capture.
Dollar Neutral approaches also stood out, achieving 31.23% cumulative returns across peers in the Index. Those strategies profited most during discrete periods of market microstructure clarity, including pricing dislocations across assets in May, the stablecoin regime transition observed in August, and valuation dislocations following the October liquidations. Bybit Institutional’s Dollar Neutral implementations posted 66.69% returns, materially outpacing the industry cohort.
Risk-adjusted measures reinforced the relative advantage. The Index records a Sharpe Ratio for Bybit’s Dollar Neutral performance at 2.39 versus 0.10 and 0.62 for comparator groups; a Sortino Ratio of 4.51 versus 0.34 and 1.10; and a Calmar Ratio of 5.06 versus negative 0.75 and 1.22. The maximum drawdown for these strategies on Bybit was 7.72%, the lowest level reported among peers in the dataset.
Directional strategies, by contrast, delivered the largest raw upside participation, with an annualized return of 43.29%. Those gains came alongside higher measured volatility and deeper drawdowns, and the Index notes that directional approaches showed marked seasonality - strong performance in months with clear trends and deterioration during rapid reversals.
Liquidity and execution framed as infrastructure
The report emphasizes that neutral strategies are sensitive to exchange-level features such as precise pricing, deep liquidity, and predictable execution. Venue-specific characteristics - including liquidity depth, fee architecture and the stability of the matching engine - are identified as meaningful determinants of realized risk-adjusted returns. In this context, neutral strategy performance is presented as a proxy signal for the quality of exchange infrastructure.
Rather than isolating a single metric as the source of Bybit Institutional’s strength, the Index highlights consistent outperformance across return generation, drawdown control and multiple risk-adjusted indicators. That pattern is interpreted in the report as evidence of structural advantages rather than transient benefits from short-term volatility.
“For over a year now, everywhere investors looked, risks were omnipresent. This reality made the report‘s findings more relevant today. Bybit Institutional’s consistent outperformance across both neutral strategies demonstrates that volatility-proof infrastructure and operational excellence are critical to navigating volatile markets," said Yoyee Wang, Head of Business-to-Business at Bybit. "We don’t compete on luck; we compete on consistency, strategy, and execution."
Institutional context and participants
The Index Report draws its dataset from an environment of professional market participants and institutional platforms. 1Token is described in the report as a SOC2-compliant institutional-grade platform serving over 100 institutional crypto clients globally that collectively manage more than $20 billion in assets. Bybit Institutional is described as the institutional services arm of Bybit, offering trading infrastructure and capital-efficient solutions for hedge funds, asset managers and proprietary trading firms, among other professional market participants.
According to the material provided, Bybit is the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume and serves a community of more than 80 million users. Bybit’s corporate profile in the report emphasizes a 2018 founding date, a focus on Web3 partnerships with blockchain protocols, secure custody, diverse marketplaces, and tools intended to bridge TradFi and DeFi.
Accessing the report
The Index invites interested parties to consult the full 2025 Crypto Quant Strategy Index Report for additional methodology detail, the data-collection framework, and other supporting information. The report itself is the source for the performance, risk and infrastructure assessments summarized here.
Implications for market participants
For institutional traders and allocators who depend on repeatable, capital-efficient strategies, the findings in the Index underline the degree to which exchange-level execution and liquidity conditions affect realized outcomes. The report’s evidence that neutral strategies served as a durable means of value extraction during a stressed cycle suggests that venue selection and the operational characteristics of trading platforms merit close attention from professional participants.
At the same time, the Index cautions that strategy choice still matters: directional approaches offered the largest upside participation but did so with commensurate increases in volatility and drawdown risk, illustrating the trade-offs inherent in different quant approaches.
Overall, the 1Token Index presents a dataset-driven case that Bybit Institutional’s combination of execution quality, liquidity depth and platform stability contributed materially to superior risk-adjusted performance for neutral strategies across the 2025 stress cycle.