Avalanche Enters Wall Street as VanEck Launches AVAX ETF on Nasdaq

• VanEck has launched the first-ever US-listed Avalanche exchange-traded fund, bringing AVAX to Wall Street.
• Founder Emin Sirer described it as a “big accomplishment” that will make it easier for investors in the capital markets to own AVAX.

Avalanche has finally landed on Wall Street, with asset manager VanEck launching the first AVAX exchange-traded fund publicly listed in the US on Monday.

The VanEck Avalanche ETF, trading under the symbol VAVX, was listed on the Nasdaq yesterday and provides investors with exposure to the price returns of the AVAX token, as well as rewards from staking the token. The company will stake a portion of its holdings with a third-party service, it stated in its press release.

VanEck pledged to waive all related management fees for AVAX’s first $500 million in assets under management, or until the end of February, whichever comes first. It believes this waiver will provide cost-effective exposure to one of the most robust tokens in the market.

The New York-based company described Avalanche as a high-performance blockchain that can scale to accommodate mainstream use cases. Users can build customizable sidechains that they can then use to bring real value onchain with instant finality. This has attracted some big global companies, including Citi and FIFA. As we reported, Citi has been testing the Spruce Subnet on Avalanche for tokenizing private equity funds. FIFA has built a custom network known as the FIFA Blockchain, migrating its NFTs from Algorand and Polygon, as CNF reported.

VanEck’s director for digital asset products, Kyle DaCruz, commented:

Avalanche Targets Wall Street

With the new ETF, Avalanche joins other top blockchain networks whose tokens are now available to Wall Street via ETFs. Bitcoin and Ethereum are the pioneers, with BTC ETFs now holding over 1.3 million tokens, accounting for 6.2% of the total supply. This figure could rise even further if Nasdaq obtains the SEC’s approval to lift position caps, as CNF detailed.

Emin Gun Sirer, the founder of Ava Labs, the company behind the development of the Avalanche blockchain, said he is proud to join pioneers whose blockchain projects have landed at Nasdaq. He added:

Meanwhile, AVAX trades at $11.75 at press time, gaining 1.45% in the past day as trading volume dipped nearly 20%. Derivatives volume has also cooled, with CoinGlass revealing a 20% drop to $537 million.