Why This Wall Street Veteran Is Betting on Avalanche

Bart Smith, CEO of Avalanche Treasury Company (AVAT), joins the Layer One podcast to explain the thesis behind treasury companies as a way to get regulated, permanent-capital exposure to AVAX and the Avalanche ecosystem. He also covers his Wall Street/ETF background, why real-world-asset tokenization needs “productive” assets to matter, and why he thinks crypto’s investment thesis is stronger than ever.

OUTLINE
00:00 – Introduction
01:22 – What Is AVAT?
03:59 – Wall Street Roots & Crypto’s Rise
06:19 – The Bitcoin ETF Bet
08:58 – Hiring a COO
11:13 – Why Own AVAT?
15:56 – Scaling Avalanche & RWAs
22:54 – DeFi, TradFi & AI Fears
33:03 – Policy Risks & RWA Forecast
40:08 – Closing Thoughts

———————————————————————————

Guest links:
Bart Smith – https://twitter.com/gbartsmith
AVAT – https://twitter.com/avat_co

Host links:
Kelvin Sparks – ⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/imyoungsparks⁠⁠⁠
John Wu – ⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/John1wu
The Block – ⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/TheBlockCo
Ava Labs – ⁠⁠⁠https://twitter.com/avalabs

———————————————————————————

Subscribe to The Block’s Newsletters!
🚨 Breaking News
👨‍🔬 Expert Analysis
📈 Market Insights
Subscribe now 👉 ⁠⁠⁠https://www.theblock.co/newsletters⁠⁠⁠

——————————————————————————–

Hiring in crypto?
🧠 Find top talent fast with Campus, powered by The Block!
✅ Challenge candidates with our Crypto Assessment Test
⚡ Hire faster, build stronger teams

Start your free trial today
👉 ⁠⁠⁠https://theblock.co/campus