Crypto Asset Manager Valkyrie Launches Avalanche Trust for Accredited Investors

Two weeks after launching its first multi-coin trust, Valkyrie Investments has added its first Avalanche-focused investment vehicle.

The Valkyrie Avalanche Trust (VAVAX), which will invest solely in the blockchain’s native token AVAX, is available to accredited investors. It carries a management fee of 2% and imposes a $25,000 minimum investment.

The price of Avalanche (AVAX) was about $61 on Wednesday morning, according to data compiled by Blockworks — down about 11% from a week ago. AVAX’s market capitalization of nearly $16 billion is the 14th highest among crypto coins. 

AVAX adoption is growing rapidly due in part to its “blazing fast” transaction speeds, Valkyrie Chief Investment Officer Steven McClurg said in a statement. Avalanche is the fastest smart contracts platform as measured by time-to-finality and has the most validators securing transactions of any proof-of-stake protocol, according to the company.

“By launching this trust, we are able to give qualified investors exposure to a protocol that they have been increasingly asking about as [decentralized finance] projects, [non-fungible token] platforms and many other projects have increasingly begun to build on the Avalanche blockchain,” McClurg said.

The trust will soon begin staking AVAX to generate additional returns.

Based in Nashville, Valkyrie reached $1 billion in assets under management in February. The trust launch is Valkyrie’s second this year as the firm seeks to offer exposure to a wider universe of digital assets. Its six other single-asset trusts focus on bitcoin, algorand, polkadot, dash, TRON and Zilliqa. 

“With the launch of the Avalanche Valkyrie Trust, institutions will have another reliable avenue to tap into the innovation happening across the community,” Ava Labs President John Wu said in a statement.

Valkyrie launched its first multi-coin trust last month, which represents the firm’s “highest-conviction plays” in the crypto space. Upon launch, 10% of fund capital was allocated to AVAX.

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