Bitwise Details Avalanche ETP, Institutional Strategy

Matt Hougan, chief investment officer at Bitwise, recently outlined the firm’s Avalanche exchange-traded product and how it fits into the company’s institutional strategy. Hougan said the ETP packages Avalanche’s native token, AVAX, into a regulated security that trades on public markets and settles through traditional securities infrastructure.

The ETP is designed to mirror AVAX price performance while operating under custody, compliance and reporting standards used by institutional investors. Bitwise positions the product to address operational frictions that can deter large investors from holding native crypto assets, including custody complexity, counterparty risk and internal policy constraints on direct ownership.

Bitwise plans to standardize daily net asset value reporting, independent custody of underlying tokens and on-chain proof-of-reserve or third-party attestations to support transparency. The firm expects the ETP format to simplify tax reporting and compliance workflows common to institutional adoption of direct crypto holdings.

Hougan noted that Bitwise evaluates blockchain protocols on developer activity, decentralization, transaction finality and use cases in decentralized finance and tokenized assets. The company applies a repeatable framework across single-asset and diversified ETPs so portfolio managers can compare protocol exposures on consistent metrics.

Bitwise has expanded its product lineup to include both diversified funds and single-asset exchange-traded products aimed at institutional and wealth-management channels. The firm maintains processes for custody, auditability and index methodology and works with third-party custodians and auditors.

The Avalanche ETP provides asset managers and family offices a way to gain or reduce allocation to AVAX without interacting directly with crypto exchanges or custody providers. The product trades on regulated markets as a security that holds the underlying token under institutional custody arrangements.

Avalanche is a layer-1 blockchain that supports smart contracts and decentralized applications. AVAX is the protocol’s native token used for transaction fees and staking, and exchange-traded products package such tokens into securities that trade on regulated markets, offering regulated wrappers for investors who prefer not to hold assets directly on-chain.