Avalanche correction risk rises after AVAX price soars 80% from January lows

Avalanche (AVAX) recovery extended into its third week, primarily in the wake of similar upside retracement across the top crypto assets.

On Thursday, AVAX's price rallied by nearly 16% to reach $96.50, its best level since Jan. 14, 2022. The massive intraday move came as a part of a recovery that started Jan. 22, after the Avalanche token bottomed out near $53. As a result, AVAX's net rebound came out to be more than 80%.

Crypto markets have been whipsawed since the beginning of 2022 as investors assessed the U.S. Federal Reserve's monetary tightening prospects. After reaching its record high above $150 in November 2021, AVAX lost as much as 65% of its value in what many have termed as "crypto winter."

Similarly, top cryptocurrencies Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) plunged by as much as 52% and 57% from their Nov. 2021 record highs. But they recovered almost half of their losses after bottoming out in late Jan. 2022, thus prompting other crypto assets — including AVAX — to undergo similar healing rallies.

AVAX price also rose as Avalanche—as a standalone blockchain project—reported massive network growth at 2021's close.

That included a rise in the number of its daily active addresses to 70,000 per day in Q4 versus 10,000 per day in Q3 and a 714% rise in the total value locked (TVL), the fastest growth among its competitors within the Layer-1 and Layer-2 categories, after the arrival of leading Ethereum protocols, Aave and Curve, into its ecosystem.

Interestingly, the Avalanche network grew in Q4 despite a drop in its net market valuation in the same period, suggesting AVAX merely reacted to turbulence in the crypto and, in turn, the global markets, led by the Fed's so-called taper tantrums. 

But a report co-authored by Messari