Bitwise launches spot Avalanche ETF with built in staking rewards

Bitwise Asset Management launched its Avalanche ETF on Wednesday, giving public market investors direct exposure to $AVAX through the ticker BAVA as the firm deepens its push into crypto exchange traded products.

The fund began trading on the NYSE on April 15 and is designed to hold spot $AVAX while staking those holdings through Bitwise Onchain Solutions to capture part of Avalanche’s average staking rewards, which Bitwise said are around 5.4%.

Bloomberg ETF analyst James Seyffart said on X that BAVA launched with $2.5 million in assets and logged more than $400,000 in volume in its first 90 minutes, which he said was pretty strong even if it was not a blockbuster debut.

Avalanche’s native token was trading near $9.44 at press time, up about 1.4% on the day and roughly 5% since the start of April. Even so, the token has badly underperformed over the past several years and remains far below its 2021 all-time high around $145.

Bitwise pitched the launch as a way for investors to gain exposure to one of the more enterprise focused blockchain ecosystems. In its announcement, the firm highlighted Avalanche’s use in projects tied to FIFA’s custom blockchain, Wyoming’s Frontier Stable Token, and public sector record digitization efforts in New Jersey through Balcony.

The BAVA launch also extends Bitwise’s strategy of bringing more altcoin products to market after it used a newer generic listing process to launch a U.S. spot Solana ETF in late 2025. The move accelerated competition across altcoin funds and highlighted how quickly issuers were trying to secure first mover advantage in single asset crypto ETFs beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum.