AVAX: cheap on fees, recovering usage and a Schwab listing ahead. Initiating at Buy, $12.50 target
Sixhundred Research: Avalanche (AVAX). Rating: Buy. 12-month price target: $12.50, about 23% above today's $10.17.
Why we like it
Avalanche is a public blockchain, a shared ledger anyone can build apps on, and those apps pay real fees. Over the last 30 days they paid at a pace of about $136 million a year, up about 25% from the month before. At a market value of about $4.5 billion, AVAX trades at about 33 times those fees. Think of it like a price-to-sales ratio: lower is cheaper. That makes AVAX cheaper than Aptos, NEAR and Sui on the same measure.
Brokers are lining up too. Charles Schwab said on Aug 27 that AVAX trading is coming to Schwab Crypto "in the coming months," opening the token to a big US audience. Aave, a major app for borrowing and lending crypto, went live on Avalanche in July.
How we get to $12.50
Our base case alone points higher than today's price. We assume about 4% more tokens a year from now.
- Bull, $22.10 (+117%): fees return toward last year's pace of about $255 million at 40 times.
- Base, $11.78 (+16%): fees grow about 25% to roughly $170 million at 32 times.
- Bear, $5.15 (−49%): fees slip back to about $95 million at 25 times.
Weighting the base case at 50% and the others at 25% each gives $12.71, which we round down to $12.50.
What could go wrong
Monthly fees are still about half of last year's level, and another fade like early 2026 would hurt. New tokens dilute holders who don't stake. Schwab gave no launch date. AVAX also moves with Bitcoin, so a broad crypto selloff would drag it down.
The chart
AVAX sits above its 50-, 100- and 200-day averages, so the longer trend is healthy, but it's under its 20-day average after falling about 15% from the Sep 29 high of $12.01. Support sits near $6.20, the August area. Resistance is $12.01, then the low teens toward our target.
Sources
- Prices as of 11:40 am ET, Oct 16, 2026 (Kraken).
- CoinGecko: market value and supply, Oct 16, 2026.
- DefiLlama: fees paid on the network, accessed Oct 16, 2026.
- Charles Schwab press release, Aug 27, 2026.
- Aave blog, Jul 15, 2026.
Disclosure
This is research for information only. It is not investment advice or an offer or recommendation to buy or sell anything. Crypto prices are very volatile, and you can lose all of your money.