Avalanche flips MATIC, TRX and LINK to become a top-10 crypto

Much has been said of Solana’s recovery since the whole Sam Bankman-Fried thing. But one of the network’s primary rivals, Avalanche, is also having a bit of a moment.

Blink and you might have missed it: Avalanche (AVAX) has flipped bitcoin cash (BCH), polygon (MATIC), polkadot (DOT), tron (TRX) and chainlink (LINK) over the past two weeks.

At $9.8 billion, AVAX is now a top-10 cryptocurrency by market cap (if you don’t count Lido Staked ETH), its highest rank all year. 

In US dollar terms, AVAX has jumped 150% year to date — almost all of it over the past month. Bitcoin (BTC) has returned slightly more, with BTC’s rallies largely credited with turning crypto into a sea of green after a dark, lengthy bear market.

Hit play to see Avalanche flip its way into the top 10

Avalanche’s outsized gains are more apparent when tracking its price against bitcoin. Of the top 30 or so cryptocurrencies, AVAX’s bitcoin ratio is the second-best performer over the past three months, having risen 60%, trailing Solana’s, which nearly doubled.

That means a hypothetical crypto trader who sold BTC for AVAX three months ago could now get 60% more bitcoin back on that play — all while BTC itself has rallied 70% against the US dollar.

As of earlier today, ether’s bitcoin ratio had meanwhile slipped by about one-fifth — half as bad as Binance’s BNB. Anyone who sold bitcoin for ether (ETH) at the start of September would get almost 20% less BTC if closing those positions today. 

Notice how SOL and LINK’s bitcoin ratios pumped first, with AVAX following a few weeks later?

Much like Solana, Ethereum, Tron and Polygon, Avalanche is a layer-1 blockchain that supports stablecoins, DeFi applications, memecoins and even Ordinals-like inscriptions. 

Still, why are markets favoring Avalanche? 

Vivek Raman, head of proof of stake at boutique digital asset unit BitOoda, pointed out that all the “alternative layer-1” networks outside of Ethereum are having tremendous runs.

“Solana is up more than seven times from its cycle lows after dropping 95% from its 2021 peak,” Raman said.

“Avalanche is the next major layer-1 that is having a mean reversion bounce and is therefore outperforming right now,” Raman continued. “The major two crypto assets — ETH and BTC — were down much less than altcoins, and this Avalanche move is simply part of a catchup move.”

Avalanche is still down more than 80% from all-time high set in November 2021

Avalanche’s tech stack was also used for a recent Project Guardian pilot, led by JPMorgan Onyx, which explored the potential benefits of tokenized investment portfolios. 

The actual Avalanche mainnet wasn’t used, though, with the banks playing around with a fresh permissioned (private) version of the blockchain. 

Still, Raman reasoned that JPMorgan’s tests  “could be a fundamental driver for the [Avalanche] ecosystem.”

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