Avalanche's Nahas: Token prices are down, but 'I've never seen more opportunities' in crypto

Ava Labs Chief Business Officer John Nahas said the crypto market is in a "teenage pubescent phase" with prices down, but he has "never been more bullish" on the space.

"I think blockchain and crypto is in that like teenage pubescent phase right now," Nahas told The Block's Kelvin Sparks at the Wyoming Blockchain Symposium 2026. "We're like full of acne and we don't know what we're doing."

The comments come as crypto prices have rebounded sharply. Bitcoin is trading above $78,000 on Friday, up more than 8% over 24 hours, while ether was above $2,400, up 6%.

Nahas distinguished Avalanche's current growth from prior market cycles.

"What we've been focusing on has not been the traditional crypto cycles," he said. "It's always been narrative, short-term six-month cycles that come and go, a lot of speculation."

Nahas said the market is "catching up" to Avalanche's focus on real-world assets and applications. "Whether it's enterprise payments, government adoption, identity, World Cup ticketing, real-world use cases using digital rails, at the end of the day, what blockchain does is transfer value," he said.

Avalanche's edge 

Nahas also credited Avalanche's ability to spin up jurisdiction-compliant, asset- or business-specific custom Layer 1 blockchains as a technological edge over other public, permissionless chains.

"Everyone else is fit your business or your asset or use case on our technology," he said. "For us, it's our technology can conform to make your business better."

"Token prices are down, market is down," Nahas said, "but I'll tell you from where I sit, I have never seen more opportunities. I've never been more bullish on the people entering the space, the use cases, the opportunities to build new innovative things using these rails."

Meanwhile, Ava Labs is also undergoing a leadership change. President John Wu is moving to a senior adviser role after seven years as president, while former Chief Operating Officer Charley Cooper is becoming president while retaining the COO title, Nahas said.