The price of AVAX, the native token of the Avalanche blockchain, jumped after a newly formed company announced its plans to go public in the US and purchase over $1 billion worth of the token.
The company, Avalanche Treasury Co., said on Wednesday that it would merge with the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Mountain Lake Acquisition Corp. in a deal valued at over $675 million.
The merged company expects to list on the Nasdaq in the first quarter of 2026 under the ticker symbol “AVAT,” subject to regulatory and shareholder approval.
Emin Gün Sirer, the founder and CEO of the Avalanche blockchain development firm Ava Labs, will join the company as an adviser.
The business will be the second so-called treasury company focused on Avalanche and joins a herd of companies going public or pivoting to buying and holding cryptocurrencies this year.
Avalanche Treasury Co. eyes $1 billion AVAX holdings
Avalanche Treasury Co. said it has an “exclusive relationship” with the Avalanche Foundation, an organization that supports the blockchain, which had reportedly planned to sell millions of Avalanche (AVAX) tokens at a discounted price to treasury companies.
The treasury company said it plans to own more than $1 billion worth of AVAX after it goes public next year, and its initial capital raise “will result in approximately $460 million in treasury assets funded.”
AVAX rose shortly after the announcement to an intraday high of $31.32. It has since cooled but remains up 2.3% in the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
Crypto-focused venture firms and companies have backed the merger, including Dragonfly, VanEck, FalconX, Monarq, Galaxy Digital, Pantera Capital, CoinFund and Kraken.
Bart Smith, the former CEO of major crypto market maker Susquehanna Crypto, has been named CEO of Avalanche Treasury Co.
Avalanche Treasury Co. plans to be active onchain
The company said that it will conduct additional activities to generate revenue “beyond passive accumulation” and also plans to be active on the Avalanche blockchain.
It added that it will deploy funds via “targeted protocol investments,” assist enterprises with tokenizing real-world assets and stablecoins, and establish its own validator infrastructure.
“Many institutions have difficulty accessing digital assets or are limited to holding native tokens without yield or ecosystem integration,” Smith said. “We created Avalanche Treasury Co. to offer something we believe will be more valuable than passive exposure.”
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The company joins the likes of AgriFORCE Growing Systems, which announced on Sept. 22 that it will rebrand as AVAX One and purchase $700 million worth of AVAX.
Company aims to offer “discount” compared to token
Avalanche Treasury Co. said it will launch “with an initial AVAX token purchase at a discount to market price and 18-month priority on Avalanche Foundation sales to US digital asset treasury companies.”
The company is aiming for a multiple of net asset value (mNAV) of 0.77, which it touted as a “23% discount compared to buying AVAX directly.”
However, analysts from NYDIG recently argued that the mNAV metric is misleading as it doesn’t properly represent a company’s financial position.
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