Cryptocurrency Avalanche Surges After Deloitte Deal

The cryptocurrency Avalanche has seen a surge in the past few days, following a partnership with Deloitte to construct more efficient disaster relief platforms.

As Bloomberg Businessweek reports, that rise briefly took Avalanche into the top 10 cryptos in terms of market value, past Dogecoin and Shiba Inu, reaching a record $144.96 on Sunday (Nov. 21).

“It’s another example of faster, cheaper Ethereum competitors doing well,” Jonathan Cheesman of crypto-derivatives exchange FTX told Bloomberg. “There’s a huge wealth effect and a lot opportunistic and mobile capital.”

The Deloitte partnership will leverage the Avalanche blockchain for better security, accuracy and speed for Federal Emergency Management Agency funding, while also assisting state and local governments who want to streamline disaster reimbursement applications.

The Avalanche Foundation in September announced it had raised $230 million through a private token sale, to participants that included Polychain and Three Arrows Capital. Both of those investors also backed the $200 million-plus Blizzard fund announced earlier this year to support development on Avalanche.

“It is about utility, for both crypto-native and crossover traditional tech,” John Wu, president of Ava Labs, told Bloomberg.

According to the news outlet, Avalanche has doubled in the past month, and is up 3,000% in the last year. The news report notes the infamous volatility of cryptos, with even the ones hitting the top of the market experiencing huge swings.

For example, Dogecoin — with a $30 billion market cap — was trading at $0.22 Monday (Nov. 22), down from its $0.74 in May but up from its 52-week low of $0.002961. Doge has seen a year-to-date increase of 4,714.59%.

Read more: Who Wants to Be a Crypto Millionaire?

And as PYMNTS’ Karen Webster wrote Monday in her look at the rise of crypto millionaires, a new coin is moving to the front of the pack, so to speak, in the form of Shib Inu, or Shib.

That coin was trading Monday at $0.00004893 a coin, meaning several hundred dollars could buy you several million coins.

And while a recent analysis of Shib notes that anyone who invested $15 in August of 2020, when it was trading at $0.00000000051 a coin, would be a millionaire by now, it’s worth proceeding with caution. After all, Shib’s rise could very easily be followed by an equally dramatic fall.