By
Temitope Olatunji
April 26th, 2024
Ava Labs’ president said that institutions continue to explore the blockchain and crypto space by undertaking interesting new projects.
Amid the recent crypto winter, John Wu, the president of Ava Labs shared his views on how traditional institutional players are sticking around while continuing to influence the space.
Ava Labs is the operator of the Ethereum sidechain Avalanche. The Avalanche blockchain is another smart contracts platform designed for sustainability and speed. It is also home to several services like crypto trading, lending, staking, and for popular DApps like Nexo and SushiSwap.
As of press time, Avalanche’s native token $AVAX is up 10.09% trading at $23,64. The AVAX price is up more than 28% over the last week. However, AVAX continues to trade at more than 80% discount from its all-time high.
John Wu said that the top financial institutions are still innovating amid the crypto winter. He said that traditional financial giants like JPMorgan Chase and Société Générale-Forge, a subsidiary of one of France’s largest investment banks, are paving the way for broader crypto adoption. Wu told Decrypt:
“The institutions who are trying to apply the blockchain technology to either streamline or to do new tokenization of real world assets, their interest has absolutely not waned”.
Here’s How Big Players Navigating Crypto Winter
Banking giant JPMorgan has been involved in the crypto and blockchain industry for a while. It has also been leveraging the power of blockchain for cross-border settlements worldwide.
Banking giant JPMorgan has its own stablecoin JPM Coin pegged 1:1 to the US Dollar. The JPM Coin helps the bank facilitate large value transactions for institutional clients. John Wu sees this project as a notable on-ramp for institutional players willing to get into crypto.
Besides, Wu also compared JPMorgan’s recent efforts to that of the Monetary Authority of Singapore and DBS Bank Limited, in setting up the DeFi project for wholesale lending aimed toward financial institutions. “You have big massive asset management firms looking to get into using blockchain and crypto to tokenize assets,” Wu added.
Besides, the Ava Labs president compared the similar initiative by decentralized stablecoin issuer MakerDAO. Maker approved a $30 million in DAI lending to Société Générale-Forge. The French company will pay for the loan by issuing “OFH tokens,” a digitized version of covered bonds backed by home loans.
John Wu added that Ava Labs has also been working with a few institutional clients as of now. Besides, it works with asset management firms looking to get into crypto. “The amount of stuff, for institutional purposes, has only increased,” he added.