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AVAX, the crypto token behind the Avalanche blockchain, is up almost 50% in the first weeks of this year. The reason? An announcement that Amazon will partner with them.

Let's understand what the two companies are up to.

Avalanche currently sits at position #17 of all blockchains if you order them by money invested. To put that in perspective, it is still a whopping 80x smaller than Bitcoin, but the project has big ambitions.

So what makes Avalanche special? In a nutshell, it tries to replicate all the things we can do with traditional money – like send it around, create financial contracts, and replace the traditional banking system. But it aims to do that at much higher potential speeds than the competition. If you think about it, that goal does make a lot of sense: In a potential future where all payments run over blockchains, those blockchains have to handle a lot.

However, in case you didn't know, the elephant in the crypto nerd room is that most blockchains, even Bitcoin and Ethereum, are painfully slow and could never handle such future demand. It's so bad actually, that executives at Visa are probably giggling every day when they see those numbers.

Enter Avalanche: It is already much faster than the competition, and wants to become the one blockchain ready for primetime.

At the core of this is Avalanches technology, this bits and bites you don’t see - and this is where Amazon comes in. They have a division called AWS, which provides computers for rent. For that, they operate massive warehouses stuffed to the ceiling with technology. Want to hear a crazy fact? Every third app or website you use runs on those Amazon computers and you’d never know it.

Going forward, Amazon will make it very easy for people to operate an Avalanche computer in those warehouses. The more computers, the more transactions Avalanche can crunch. The easier it is to set them up, the faster the number can grow.

And that's exactly why investors are so excited: Because running a fast blockchain for everyone needs a lot of blockchain computers. And Amazon happens to have the most computers and is now throwing their weight behind Avalanche.

So, if anything, this is great PR for Avalanche. But before you get too excited, remember that people will have to want to use blockchains in the future, otherwise this is all just empty excitement without future customers. And only time will tell how fast that will happen.

Until then - enjoy it when the market goes up. The crypto community needed a good moment.

This podcast is produced by Cryptohunt.it, the easiest place to learn all about Web3. Oh, and welcome to all the new listeners we got from those nice referrals from you - in the last few days! Thank you so much - and please: Keep them coming