Avalanche’s (AVAX) price has rallied over 10% today following the news of the launch of Valkyrie, a prominent digital asset manager, and the increasing interest in Avalanche among institutional investors.
At the time of writing, AVAX was trading at $67.25, up 10.91% after hitting a one-week high of $67.35 and the 11th largest cryptocurrency by market cap.
Valkyrie’s announcement
On Wednesday, Valkyrie announced the launch of an investment trust dedicated to AVAX. With the announcement, Valkyrie is anticipating that more institutional money will be drawn into the Avalanche blockchain since there has been a growing interest among institutional investors in AVAX after Ethereum’s plan to shift to the medium this year.
The trust will allow institutional investors to acquire token exposure without buying them directly as well as invest in AVAX on their behalf, however, according to Valkyrie, the trust will be available to qualified investors only.
In addition, Valkyrie praised Avalanche as one of the fastest smart contract platforms in the entire blockchain industry.
Crypto market influence on AVAX
The broader crypto market is also experiencing significant gains today.
The rise in the entire crypto market was influenced by the investors’ relief after U.S Federal Reserve raised the rates as anticipated. In the last 24 hours the total crypto market capitalization has experienced an increase of about $100 billion.
Proof-of-stake networks adoption
There have been a growing interest in Proof-of-Stake (PoS) tokens like AVAX, ADA, and SOL as Ethereum plans to shift to a PoS network. Avalanche, in specific, is seen as a major Ethereum challenger.
The institutional investors seem to be attracted to PoS tokens as an alternative investment to Bitcoin. This is because of the lower energy requirement in the Proof-of-Stake tokens as compared to that of Proof-of-Work tokens making it one of the best choices for environmentally conscious regulators.
Additionally, Digital fund managers like 21Shares, CoinShare, and Grayscale have also launched PoS-exposed products as the demand from their institutional clients continues to grow this year.