How To Buy Avalanche (AVAX)

Avalanche (AVAX) is a relatively new cryptocurrency. Despite only emerging in 2020, it has gained huge popularity as an alternative for Ethereum developers. Avalanche has become one of the largest cryptocurrencies, with a market capitalization of around £5.38 billion. Here's what you need to know about buying AVAX.

Avalanche in the digital economy

Ethereal it has some notable downsides, such as high gas fees and slow transaction speeds. Avalanche was created as a highly scalable blockchain that addresses these issues. AVAX bills itself as "the fastest smart chain contract platform in the blockchain industry."

While Avalanche offers many admirable features, cryptocurrency users are embracing it due to its agile structure.

AVAX supports three blockchains. One, Contract Chain (C-Chain), is ideal for smart contracts, such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized applications (DApps). C-Chain is compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine, allowing Ethereum developers to use it to deploy applications.

Users pay a subscription fee on AVAX to operate on the Avalanche blockchain, though the costs are much lower than Ethereum's gas fees. Gas refers to the amount of ETH needed to make a transaction on the Ethereum blockchain.

Another fact about Avalanche: AVAX is a limited supply token with a maximum of 720 million tokens. Currently, there are more than 330 million tokens in circulation.

You can also stake your AVAX as Avalanche runs on a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism.

How to buy AVAX

If you decide to invest in Avalanche, you can buy AVAX tokens in just three steps:

1. Choose a cryptocurrency exchange

Before you can buy AVAX, or any form of cryptocurrency, you must open an account with a cryptocurrency exchange. Cryptocurrency exchanges facilitate transactions on their platforms, making it easy to buy and sell tokens.

Some crypto exchanges are designed for novice investors, with very simple interfaces. Others are for more advanced traders and include features like cryptocurrency staking. The best cryptocurrency exchanges offers various cryptocurrencies and low trading fees.

2. Buy AVAX

Once you have opened an account and selected a payment method, you can make your first investment in AVAX.

Go to the exchange's trading platform and enter the Avalanche ticker symbol, AVAX, and how much you want to invest. Typically, you can enter a number of tokens, or you can choose to enter a dollar amount to invest.

You can also decide on an order type; market orders are processed immediately, while limit orders are only processed once the token reaches a certain price. A limit order may be a good idea if you expect the price to change significantly in the near future.

If you place a market order, the order will be processed immediately and you will be a proud AVAX investor.

3. Save your AVAX

With cryptocurrencies, you need to think about storage to protect your investment. AVAX can be stored in several different ways:

• Hardware wallets. A hardware wallet is a physical device that stores the private keys of your crypto assets. They are similar to flash drives and are considered cold storage: they are not connected to any network or the Internet. Popular hardware wallets include Trezor and Ledger. In fact, Ledger Nano X allows you to connect to any third-party wallet that supports Avalanche.
• Paper wallets. Paper wallets are exactly what they sound like: they are pieces of paper printed with your private and public keys. Paper wallets are less popular now that more people are investing in cryptocurrency, as there is always a risk of losing paper and never being able to access your investments.
• Software wallets. Software wallets are apps or programs that are downloaded to your device to store your crypto assets. They are often called a "hot wallet." While not as secure as a “cold wallet”, assets are easily accessible in software wallets when you want to trade your holdings. The Avalanche network also has its own no custody Avalanche Wallet to store Avalanche assets. You will need to enter your keystore file, private key, and recovery phase for that web wallet.
• Crypto exchanges. Cryptocurrency exchanges, such as Crypto.com, allow you to store your cryptocurrency on their platforms. For example, Crypto.com DeFi Wallet will allow you to store Avalanche-C (AVAX).

What you can buy with AVAX

You can use AVAX to pay transaction fees or as currency within the Avalanche network. Alternatively, you can simply speculate on the token price by buying and selling AVAX with other crypto investors.

The price of AVAX, at the time of writing, had dropped 54% year over year.

If you decide to invest in Avalanche, keep in mind that the price can fluctuate wildly. For that reason, financial experts recommend that cryptocurrency investments only make up a small part of your overall investment portfolio.