Avalanche (AVAX) Becomes Top-10 Cryptocurrency by Market Cap

According to Blockworks, Avalanche (AVAX) has recently become a top-10 cryptocurrency by market cap, reaching $9.8 billion. This is the highest rank it has achieved all year. In US dollar terms, AVAX has jumped 150% year to date, with most of the growth occurring over the past month. Bitcoin (BTC) has returned slightly more, with its rallies largely credited with turning the crypto market green after a lengthy bear market. Avalanche's gains are more apparent when tracking its price against bitcoin. Of the top 30 cryptocurrencies, AVAX's bitcoin ratio is the second-best performer over the past three months, having risen 60%, trailing Solana's, which nearly doubled. This 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. Much like Solana, Ethereum, Tron, and Polygon, Avalanche is a layer-1 blockchain that supports stablecoins, DeFi applications, memecoins, and even Ordinals-like inscriptions. 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. "Avalanche is the next major layer-1 that is having a mean reversion bounce and is therefore outperforming right now," Raman said. 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. Raman reasoned that JPMorgan's tests "could be a fundamental driver for the [Avalanche] ecosystem."