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Buy Avalanche in Canada

Avalanche made simple

Everything you need to know about Avalanche and how to start investing in it.

Current Price

This one’s easy: the price the coin or token is trading at right now.

$48.04 CAD

+$1.05 (2.23%) past 24 hours

Market Cap
The value of the entire supply of a specific cryptocurrency or token. It’s calculated by taking the price of a coin/token and multiplying it by the total number of that coin/token in circulation.
$20,653,352,463.77
Circulating Supply
The amount of coins that have already been created and are available in the market.
$377,933,635.36
24h low - high range
Low-high range over the past 24 hours.
$44.12 - $49.29

Avalanche 101

AVAX is the native token of Avalanche, a fast, cheap, smart contract-enabled blockchain that rivals Ethereum. These features are important, given that Ethereum chugs along at a painful 14 transactions per second, with each costing $200 or more in times of peak congestion. This makes Ethereum expensive for regular users, and thus potentially unsuitable for the wild world of DeFi. At some point — hopefully in the next coupe of years — Ethereum will be upgraded to the long-promised ETH2, addressing those speed and cost issues. Until then, the market is desperate for the solution that Avalanche (and many new blockchains including Solana and Polkadot) provide.

Under the hood, Avalanche is composed of three blockchains. The C-Chain is used for smart contracts and minting new tokens. DeFi protocols like Penguin Finance, Yield Yak and Trader Joe run on that blockchain. The X-Chain hosts AVAX, which is the equivalent of ETH on Ethereum. The P-Chain is used to confirm transactions on the Avalanche blockchain. Structuring the network this way is supposed to ensure that Avalanche stays lightning fast as it scales.

AVAX launched towards the end of 2020, and it grew immensely popular in 2021. The token rose from a price of $3.66 on January 1st to highs of $134 by the end of November. After crashing in late January, as of early March it was back to $73.

Why Wealthsimple Crypto?

Wealthsimple Crypto lets you buy and sell cryptocurrencies all in one easy-to-use app. And as Canada’s first regulated crypto platform, you can trust that your coins are in good hands. How simple is it?

  • Sign up in minutes right from your phone or laptop
  • Start trading crypto with as little as $1
  • No account minimums
  • No clunky dashboards — just one super simple app
  • Best of all: you don’t need to be an expert in crypto or blockchain to get started
Get started with Crypto

What can you do with Avalanche?

You can use AVAX to process transactions on the Avalanche blockchain network. Fees change according on what you want to do. Sending a token on the C-Chain, which handles smart contrasts, costs a base fee of 0.001575 AVAX, but this increases when the network is clogged up and decreases when it is not.

Avalanche is a proof-of-stake network, so you can pledge your AVAX tokens to secure the P-Network and earn more tokens as reward. The minimum you can stake is 2,000 AVAX tokens, but if that’s too steep a price for you, you can delegate your tokens to staking services, which are commonly offered on exchanges, to put your AVAX to work. As of February 2022, staking rewards pay out at an average of 9.71% a year.

Along with functioning as a governance token — allowing holders to vote on such parameters as staking rewards, network fees and airdrops — AVAX also powers the network’s DeFi protocols. You can use those to make or take out loans or swap AVAX for other Avalanche tokens.

Lastly, some investors prefer to hold AVAX for speculative purposes. (You can buy it on many crypto platforms, along with Wealthsimple.) Like many altcoins, AVAX still has a relatively small market cap and has proven historically volatile.

Is Avalanche a smart investment?

Crypto carries risks — but generally speaking, our advice (regardless of whether you’re investing in Avalanche or stocks) is: never invest what you can’t afford to lose. The smartest way to grow your money long term is with a diversified, low-cost portfolio that tracks the market.

How we keep your Avalanche safe

As Canada’s first regulated crypto trading platform, we’re required to meet certain requirements — like using only qualified custodians (like Coinbase Custody) for cold storage.

FYI: Wealthsimple Crypto is not an exchange itself. Instead, we work with multiple exchanges to give you the best Avalanche prices.

And to make sure your coins are extra protected, we’ve partnered with Coincover for an extra layer of security.

If you’re holding crypto outside of Wealthsimple, that’s no problem. You can safely transfer your Avalanche to your Wealthsimple account in just a few taps.

Other cryptos to explore

More info about Avalanche

Want to take a deeper dive? Check out these articles about Avalanche and the world of crypto.

Explore all articles on Crypto

Ready to get started?

Download the Wealthsimple Trade app, create your account, and start trading Avalanche with just $1. It’s that simple.

By clicking “Create account”, you agree to Wealthsimple’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.

FAQs

Avalanche, also known as AVAX, is the native token of the Avalanche blockchain. Avalanche is known for being fast and cheap to use. Launched in 2020, Avalanche became popular the following year as an alternative to Ethereum, the largest smart contract-enabled blockchain that has become clouded by congestion.

As of Feburary 2022, there are 245 million AVAX tokens in circulation out of a total circulating supply of 395 million. The capped supply, which includes AVAX reserved for staking rewards, is 720 million AVAX. The inflation rate – the rate at which new tokens are issued to stakers – is 40%. The blockchain’s governance mechanism influences the rate of inflation.

Aside from cryptocurrency exchanges, where you can swap AVAX tokens for cryptocurrencies or regular money, perhaps the most obvious place to spend AVAX is within the Avalanche ecosystem itself. Avalanche is full of a rich and fast-growing ecosystem of decentralized finance protocols. You can also “spend” AVAX by staking it on the network – this helps to secure the blockchain, and you’ll earn more AVAX tokens as a reward– but you get these tokens back as soon as you’re finished.

Yep! When you open a Wealthsimple Crypto account, you can get started with anywhere from $1 to $1,500 instantly.

Generally speaking, the CRA treats cryptocurrencies as a commodity. Here’s what they say:

Any income from transactions involving cryptocurrency is generally treated as business income or as a capital gain, depending on the circumstances. Similarly, if earnings qualify as business income or as a capital gain then any losses are treated as business losses or capital losses.

Always keep solid records of any Avalanche transactions. If you use Wealthsimple Crypto to buy or sell cryptocurrencies, we’ll generate some of those tax documents for you.

Avalanche’s current market cap is 20,653,352,464.

The current price for Avalanche in Canadian dollars is $48.04.

Buying Avalanche with Wealthsimple is, well, simple. The first thing you need to do is open and fund a Crypto account in the Wealthsimple Trade app. You can connect your bank account and add up to $1,500 instantly.

From there, follow these steps: 1. Tap the magnifying glass icon in the top right corner of your screen 2. Type in Avalanche 3. Tap Buy 4. Enter the dollar value of cryptocurrency you'd like to buy and tap Continue 5. Review the order details and tap Confirm order

You can choose between two different order types when buying Avalanche. A market order lets you buy or sell crypto immediately at the best available price at the time. A limit order lets you buy or sell crypto at a specific price or better.

You can withdraw funds from the cash balance in your Crypto account and move those funds to your bank account. Withdrawals typically take around 2 - 3 business days.

A crypto wallet — often called a “hot wallet” — is a location for holding crypto “on-chain” (i.e. linked to the blockchain versus off-chain cold storage.) Many users use wallet applications to help them manage their blockchain addresses, since each chain uses its own addresses.