Welcome back to our weekly dive into the Avalanche blockchain and the wider crypto world. If you’re following Avalanche, crypto trends, meme coins, and NFTs, you’re in the right place. We’ve got all the insights on market movements, upcoming launches, and the latest in Avalanche’s growing ecosystem.
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This weeks Avalanche update on YouTube
I have to say it, but please note... Nothing here is financial advice.
Market Conditions: Bitcoin, AVAX, and Election-Week Volatility
Bitcoin Market Moves
Bitcoin opened last week at $67,922, and it closed slightly higher at $68,741. Midweek, Bitcoin nearly reached a new all-time high, showing some signs of a bullish surge, but it didn’t quite push through. Bitcoin’s performance is crucial as it sets the pace for the entire market, including major altcoins and, of course, Avalanche.
Avalanche and Altcoin Performance
On the Avalanche front, $AVAX opened last week at $25.73 and closed at $23.54. Overall, we’re seeing red across many major tokens, reflecting market uncertainty.
Looking at the avalanche memes, things are pretty red apart from a couple of flashes of green for nochill and the arena over the last week.
Election Week Volatility
We are entering into US election week, which is set to be super important. The general feeling is that if Trump wins, we pump. If he doesn’t we dump. Now I don’t think it will be that simple, as this is crypto and it never is that simple.
So, whatever happens I think we can expect volatility.
So be prepared.
I do believe that in the long run, everything will be amazing for the space, but things could get much worse, or much better.
Bitcoin Dominance: A Key Metric to Watch
One metric that I am keeping an eye is bitcoin dominance. Bitcoin dominance is essentially the metric that we use to show how much of the money in the crypto space is in bitcoin versus other tokens.
Traditionally as we enter into Alt season, we hit a high for bitcoin dominance as it surges and hits all time highs, then the money starts to flow from bitcoin into the major alts and then into memes.
Last week, bitcoin dominance hit the milestone of 60%, which for many are seeing this as a sign that it could be reaching a peak.
In the 2019 cycle, bitcoin dominance peaked 5 weeks after a rate cut, we are now 5 weeks after a rate cut, alt/bitcoin pairs are down too, so if this continues you would expect bitcoin dominance to continue to grow.
So, what next. I personally think that the BTC dominance maybe different this cycle, due to different factors, such as the ETFs and institutions being on the scene. I also think that with crypto being so much a part of the current election, I also think that this will have a huge impact.
I do think this cycle is going to be different.
Things are different, we’ve not had an Uptober for example.
And I personally am ready to expect the unexpected and bitcoin dominance is one metric I will be watching very carefully.
I can see if bitcoin pumps and goes crazy, then I think bitcoin dominance could go crazy and we have to wait to see an alt season. But then, when we do, based on the fact that now we have so much real world applications built on the other layer 1s, I think we can have an amazing alt season. Which as we see more eyes on crypto as a whole, I think that we see the liquidity both old and new flooding into more speculative plays such as memes.
I also see a bit of a sub category developing which is those that are meme coins in nature, but have actual utility and use cases, which I think opens up a happy middle ground for people that want something a little more exciting than a techy layer 1, but not a full on dog meme.
Which I think is where avalanche excels.
Strong projects, with utility, but still a hint of fun. Also, these can all have their own avalanche layer 1.
So for me…. Still bullish on the great rotation to the red chain.
Avalanche Highlights: Arena Airdrop, COQ Movie, and STICK Launch
Onto this weeks news and updates.
A Arena Airdrop and Token Launch
The arena airdrop and token launch was the big story last week on Avalanche, it was hotly anticipated after a number of what we like to call “Bullish delays”.
It really did deliver. I’ve spoke about the Arena a lot over the last few weeks, so I’m not going to go into too much detail this week.
But suffice to say it was a great launch.
The outline is that they airdropped the token to those that qualified, with the majority of the airdropped tokens being locked for 12 months. The initial airdrop was worth nearly 40 million dollars, if you take it at all time high.
Tweet by Jason Desimone
The last update was that 260 million arena are staked, which is over 65% of all claimed tokens.
A quick look at the chart, shows that it has an expected dip this week, with the market and also people selling tokens, so this is always expected.
There will be unlocks as we move through the 12 months and there’s utility at present for the tokens, such as staking, with much more utility to be announced going forward. This will be to keep those arena tokens locked in.
They have talked about the platform being a place where creators get rewarded, so I’m hyped to see how the token is used for this in more detail going forward. I did hear that they should be launching stages this week, which will be like twitter spaces, but with video. So this is something that I will defo be looking into, so with what they have planned I look forward to seeing more.
COQmentary: First Meme Coin Movie
It was announced this week that we are going to be getting the first ever meme coin movie. Titled the Coqumentary, it’s going to be all about, you guessed it $COQ.
See my full video all about The Coqumentary here
The movie was announced on the Bokcast, by the team behind it, which is coq.media, the neither official, or unofficial media team. This is all part of $ COQ being a fully decentralised community, with no official team. They will be creating this movie, which will be produced by Jon Ray.
The movie will follow the journey of $COQ from it’s fair launch in December 2023, all the way through to present day. It will feature footage of community members, irl events and be super community focussed. You can submit a story that you have via the coq.media website, by clicking here
I’m personally super excited by this as I think that it is huge for both the coq community, the avalanche community, as coq is the largest meme coin on avalanche, but also the meme coin and crypto space as a whole.
Indie movies like this have amazing reach and a project like this can take what we are in this space as a counter culture and really catapult it into worldwide recognition….. I have done a detailed video on this which I’ll link to,
Both up here somewhere and also in the comments, so check that if you want to see more.
But my closing thought on this, is… imagine sitting down, with whoever you love to get cozy with, time for a bit of Netflix and chill.
You pop Netflix on
Hear the badoom
And there on the screen is a movie about $COQ … and who knows you could be in it.
STICK: A New Meme Coin on the Rise
A new meme launched this week on Avalanche, which has done pretty well and is also holding up very well despite the market.
Stick was inspired by a stick man that was drawn by crypto Kaleo, this was then made into a meme coin and launched on bellum.
We have discussed bellum before and how it works in a similar way to pump fun over on solana. So it allows you to launch a token, on a bonding curve. As buyers come in and more people hold the token the bonding can be met. Once the target of holders is met, the liquidity then moves over to a much more recognised dex, in this case Trader Joe and so the coin theoretically gains more exposure, more buyers and the price goes up.
Now this, doesn’t always work and coins can rug at this point, or see massive sell offs and pretty much die.
STICK bonded on October 30th and has continued to perform.
It’s currently sitting at $0.002517 after a good strong rise all week.
So this is one to watch.
I personally missed $STICK, as I was travelling with not so great wifi, but I’ll be keeping an eye on it.
New Tools and Platforms: Apex Burst, Bellum, and Token Mill
This brings me onto exchanges like bellum and what they are doing at the moment.
There’s also Apex on avalanche, who this week announced their new Apex Burst,
Apex Burst Features
which has a whole host of features and benefits if you are looking to launch a token.
Features like;
Tokens that bond going onto 4 dexes which are; Apex, LFJ, Pharoah and Pangolin.
Tokens can also be Single Sided Staked on Apex, which is something I personally love.
All tokens are also launched as an ERC314, which is a token standard with a whole host of features. There’s a whole heap of other features which I will cover in more of a deep dive on these dexes in the future.
These are newer dexes that are really allowing and facilitating new tokens to be launched on Avalanche. Which I think is a good thing.
We all know and we speak about a lot, how amazing the tech is on Avalanche. We know that there’s a whole host of blue chip partnerships, amazing gaming etc on the chain. But so much of the volume and liquidity on a chain comes from it’s meme coins.
Like them, or loathe them it’s a fact.
Just look at solana.
So having dexes like this where people can launch tokens is good. Obviously it’s a fine line between the quality launches and the wild west nature that you see on pump.fun, where it’s rug after rug.
But these types of projects do help bring eyes, users and therefore volume and liquidity to a chain.
Since posting the video and adding this blog post, it has come out that one of the projects that was hoped and probably, lets be honest expected to launch on avalanche, has announced that they are launching on Solana. Token Mill by LFJ (formerly known as Trader Joe) and the biggest DEX on Avalanche have announced that their Token Mill project, aimed at launching new tokens and communities will not be on Avalanche. There’s a lot of disappointment about this on the timeline right now, but for me, this should be seen as an opportunity to really get behind the quality and innovative projects and people that we have building on the chain, like Apex and like Bellum.
This is something that I’m planning on doing a deep dive into, as I think that projects like, bellum and also Apex are going to really drive a lot of both hype and excitement, but then the trading, the liquidity and the volume that follows over to avalanche.
Follow Bellum exchange on "X" here
You know I say this a lot, so I’ll say it again. Bring on the great rotation to the red chain.
…
Real-World Use Cases: Loyalty Programs and Big-Name Collaborations
Loyalty Programs on Avalanche
There were a couple of announcements this week that came out of Avalanche, which like these types of announcements do, can fly under the radar as they are not initially as exciting as an airdrop or a meme coin pumping.
But for me these are good to talk about as they highlight an amazing irl use case of blockchain technology and in particular how well this is suited to avalanche with the ability to launch unique layer 1s that are fast, cheap and super efficient.
This use case is loyalty programmes.
You know what a loyalty programme is, where you earn rewards as you spend, for example as you buy your daily coffee from a coffee shop chain, you earn points that can be counted towards rewards from other companies, for example earning air miles to count towards international flights.
One such brand utilising this is SK planet, who is a huge South Korean conglomerate with a whole host of brands under their umbrella. SK planet builds on a custom UPTN subnet and they have been moving their rewards programme over to this.
Just for a little context on the potential here, there’s 24 million people in their loyalty system, which is over 40% of S. Koreans and over 100,000 merchants.
So this is huge.
This type of use case is perfectly suited to Avalanche, so its great to see this being put into practice.
They have seen that the initial users that they have moved over to the avalanche layer 1 are seeing an uptick in useage. This is down to the huge increases in options for users that the blockchain tech is opening up.
A great thread by @puneeth_sgr on this
who explains the following;
The loyalty management market is expected to soar to a whopping $10 Billion by year 2026 and #Avalanche Loyalties will change how businesses interact with customers. Rather, companies can issue rewards in real-time via blockchain to increase customer retention and improve experiences. By using Avalanche's low fees and fast transactions, brands can construct compelling loyalty ecosystems that truly resonate with today's consumers.
Read the full thread here, as it’s a super interesting read and it also has the link to an interview where John Wu talks in more detail to Raul pal.
Other brands are building out their loyalty programmes on custom layer 1s, it was also announced that NBA team, Cleveland Cavaliers are launching their new fan rewards programme in partnership with uptop, who are, you guessed it…built on avalanche.
So more examples of some irl use cases and the rewards/loyalty industry is one that I think has amazing potential to do something which I think is super important and that is onboarding high numbers of people onto using avalanche and interacting with the blockchain on a daily basis and not even knowing that they are doing it.
Avalanche Ambassador DAO: Expanding the Avalanche Community
Onto something that I am personally very excited about, Avalanche have announced the return of their ambassador programme. This time with an increased grant from the Avalanche foundation of a massive $1.15 million dollars.
Initially launched in April 2024 with 190 ambassadors representing avalanche the programme is back and even bigger.
The Avalanche Ambassador DAO is a global network of builders, developers, creatives, and community members dedicated to growing Avalanche.
I think this is an amazing programme as it will help spread the word about avalanche, across all spheres and worldwide too.
What I particularly love about this programme is that it focusses on the one aspect that above all of the amazing tech on avalanche it’s about the people, the people that are using the chain and the people that are both building on the chain, creating the content and ultimately these people spreading the word to everyone, to the people that both know about avalanche and blockchain technology, but also to the people that don’t.
To the noobs, to the future users and it’s these people that we want to be shouting about avalanche to. This program underscores Avalanche’s emphasis on people, spreading knowledge, and showcasing blockchain’s transformative potential to new users.
Final Thoughts
As the Avalanche ecosystem continues to grow, we’re seeing exciting developments in meme coins, NFT projects, loyalty programs, and ambassador-led initiatives that are elevating Avalanche’s visibility and adoption. With innovative DEX platforms like Bellum, Apex, and Trader Joe’s Token Mill paving the way for new token launches, Avalanche is shaping up to be the next major hub for meme coins and community-driven projects. And as real-world applications gain traction, Avalanche’s fast, low-cost network is perfectly poised to onboard the next wave of users.
So, stay tuned for more updates, keep an eye on Bitcoin dominance, and watch for the Great Rotation to the Red Chain. Avalanche is just getting started.
Peace out and good Vibes.