Avalanche’s tokenization surge in Q4
Avalanche saw some interesting movement in the fourth quarter of 2025. While the AVAX token itself didn’t perform particularly well, dropping about 59% to $12.30, something else was happening beneath the surface. The value of tokenized real-world assets on the blockchain jumped significantly—up 68.6% just in that quarter alone.
That growth brought the total to more than $1.3 billion by the end of the year. When you look at the full year, the increase was even more dramatic, nearly 950% from where things started. I think this shows a real divergence between token price performance and actual network utility.
BlackRock’s BUIDL fund makes an impact
Much of this growth came from institutional players getting involved. The BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund, which launched in November, added about $500 million to the ecosystem. That’s a substantial chunk of the total. Messari research analyst Youssef Haidar pointed this out in a recent report.
But it wasn’t just BlackRock. Fortune 500 fintech company FIS partnered with Intain, an Avalanche-based marketplace, to launch tokenized loans. Intain’s platform allows around 2,000 US banks to securitize loans on Avalanche—over $6 billion worth, apparently.
There’s also the S&P Dow Jones partnership with Dinari. They launched something called the S&P Digital Markets 50 Index, which tracks both crypto-linked stocks and actual crypto tokens on the Avalanche blockchain.
Traditional finance experiments continue
What’s interesting here is the broader trend. Traditional financial firms seem to be testing the waters with crypto tokenization. The Securities and Exchange Commission, under Paul Atkins, has apparently shown more openness to approving innovative crypto products over the past year. That regulatory environment might be helping.
We’ve also seen asset managers like Bitwise and VanEck file to launch spot Avalanche exchange-traded funds late last year. VanEck’s actually launched on Monday. These filings included staking provisions, which is noteworthy.
AVAX price struggles despite network growth
The AVAX token’s performance tells a different story, though. It dropped 59% in Q4 to $12.30, and has slid another 10.5% so far in 2026 to around $11. It hasn’t seen the same kind of price action as Bitcoin or Ethereum this cycle—both of those hit new all-time highs.
According to CoinGecko data, AVAX is down over 92% from its all-time high of $144.96 back in November 2021. That’s quite a contrast to the network’s growing utility.
DeFi activity shows mixed signals
On the DeFi side, things were more positive. The value locked in native decentralized finance in AVAX terms rose 34.5% over Q4 to 97.5 million AVAX. Daily transactions on the Avalanche blockchain increased 63% to 2.1 million over the same period.
The stablecoin picture was relatively flat, though. The total stablecoin market cap on Avalanche’s main chain increased just 0.1% in Q4 to $1.741 billion—that’s only about $1 million in growth.
One shift worth noting: Tether’s USDT overtook Circle’s USDC to become the dominant stablecoin on Avalanche. By the end of 2025, USDT represented 42.3% of the total supply with $736.6 million in circulation.
So we have this interesting situation where the underlying network is seeing real adoption growth, particularly in tokenization, while the native token struggles. It makes me wonder if we’re seeing a decoupling between utility and speculative value, or if this is just a temporary disconnect. Perhaps the market hasn’t fully recognized what’s happening on the network yet.
