Travala.com Crypto Travel
Travala has been around for quite some time and it's well known as the travel booking site where it's easily possible to pay with crypto. I've always been somewhat fascinated by it even though I rarely traveled since my main focus has always been building some financial freedom first. As I'm slowly but surely with ups and downs am moving toward that, I'm starting to get an itch to go travel more somewhere in the coming 5 years. In that regard, owning some AVA to get good discounts will likely be useful.
Switch to Utility / Revenue Altcoins
The way I see the Crypto Market right now, is that many altcoins suffer because their speculative utility has been almost totally been taken away by the Memecoins. One could even argue the most altcoins used to be nothing more than memecoins with the ones who had the biggest cult following doing the best (XRP / Cardano /...)
So in this new cycle, Memecoins likely will suck up all that speculative value and I anticipate that altcoins will get more valued based on their actual utility or revenue and actual demand. In that regard, the AVA token serves a good purpose as it gives nice discounts to people who want to book travel on their site. At a maximum supply of 100 Million tokens, this means that only 40k people at most could ever get to Platinum Tier. This at least if they don't make another vote to increase the supply which would surprise me. In practice the number is also way lower as lots of AVA is locked up on market makers and many will get lower tiers also.
AVA Price & Value Proposition
The all-time high of AVA in 2021 was ~6$ which means it's now at ~0.50$ trading roughly 92% lower while more than a 10x is needed to go back to it. At the current price and fully diluted supply, it also only comes at a total 50 Million Dollars Market Cap which is very low.
To get 2500 AVA for Platinum Tier, I paid under 1200$ which I could possibly fully earn back over time just by the discounts and cashback knowing how expensive traveling can get. There is also downside price protection since the coin has real utility which will drive demand if the price would go lower similar to I now bought it around the current price. All of this of course knowing that it all depends on the company not going bankrupt or scamming everyone. Travala has existed for quite some time and I mainly have read positive reviews on it.
So overall, it felt like a good deal. pay just 1200$ to get 2500 AVA knowing there is a chance for the price to go higher again if there is more crypto adoption which I fully expect. This on top gives me discounts on all possible future traveling.
1.6 Billion FTX Refunds
Ongoing Development & Updates
Travala isn't a ghost project like many others but continues to roll out partnerships, updates, and financial reports on their Blog
They also recently integrated with Solana which is a must nowadays since that is the hottest chain right now. All of this gives good hope and confidence toward the future of the project.
Binance Partnership & Staking
From what I understand, Travala is backed by Binance and it's very easy to leave AVA on the exchange having it staked to earn +5.39% APY as I currently don't need it yet. The moment I plan to make a first travel booking I will create an actual account on Travala and lock it there.
One of the things I learned in previous cycles is that you want to buy coins when they are low and stake them so you not only get the potential upside price action but also the yield which also grows exponentially.
Expectations
I expect for Travala to keep growing slowly but surely possibly with a peak because of the FTX Refund and that it has been in an accumulation zone for quite some time where it's a good deal to lock in 2500 AVA even if you don't plan to do much travel anytime soon. While I don't see it skyrocket anytime soon and it might underperform in the short term compared to all the speculative tokens / memes. The fact that is has got a real use case from a company that looks legit should highly limit the downside risk.
Conclusion
Regardless what happens, I'm gad to have locked in 2500 AVA at current prices intending to do some more traveling hopefully in the coming years. All this while understanding the risks and being fine in case it would go to zero like everything in crypto. In the best-case scenario, I get a good discount on all my future travel and in case Travala ever becomes big, my AVA could be worth a lot more!