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

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Bart Smith –
AVAT –

Kelvin Sparks – ⁠⁠⁠
John Wu – ⁠⁠⁠
The Block – ⁠⁠⁠
Ava Labs – ⁠⁠⁠

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