AVA (Travala) is one of only a handful of alt coins I've bought in the last year, and so far it's proving to be a good investment....
It was @trumpman who alerted to me this opportunity a few months ago, who in turn was put onto it by @empoderat, and so thanks to these guys for doing the initial scouting, research and recommending!
This is one of the few coins I've come across with a genuine real-world use case that isn't just purely financial but based in a real world service: travel and experiences.
It is currently sitting at market rank #155 on CoinMarketCap with a max supply of 64 million tokens and with a burn policy to reduce that down to 40 million. It's currently valued at $1.62 - annoyingly down from over $1.70 when I first started writing this on Thursday, but that's crypto!
What is AVA (Travala.com)?
It's an evolving travel and experience booking website, which also happens to be Crypto friendly.
I say 'also happens to be' crypto friendly because if you visit Travala.com you probably wouldn't even notice the crypto friendly aspect unless you were looking out for it:
The main public facing front end functions pretty much like Expedia - you can search for flights, hotels, and experiences and after a brief search period you are returned your results in price rank order.
NB - You get returned cheaper prices on Travala.com than Expedia
The reason I finally caved in to @trumpman's shilling a of AVA and finally bought some a couple of months back is that I conducted a search for flights and found cheaper options on Travala.
Here are my search returns on Expedia for flights from Lisbon to London in mid April 2021:
And the top returns from Travala using the same search parameters:
More interestingly the next set of Travala returns which are the same flights as the top returns from Expedia, but Travala is offering them for 15% cheaper...
I imagine that these cheap deals are only IF you buy in crypto and utilise the various discounts you get from staking AVA, but that's part of the clever model of using Crypto on a travel website - it incentivises people to buy AVA!
The AVA token - use cases
There are several use cases for AVA, I'm going to split them into staking and purchase use cases.
If you stake AVA in Travala's SMART programme you get the following benefits:
- A Smart bonus - an annual 24% return on your stake, paid out in AVA, I think it's every month.
- Smart Discounts - a discount of booking through the website, up to 5%
- Smart Loyalty - a reward of up to 5% paid out once you've used whatever it is you've paid for!
The rewards are tiered, according to how many tokens you stake - there are five levels from 500 to a maximum stake of 5000.....
In tier two for example you get the following rewards...
And you get more for higher levels of staking, up to a total discount of 10% (5% + 5%) off travel bookings if you combine the smart discount and loyalty bonus, and then another 24% on top in staking rewards.
On top of this, if you pay in AVA, you get even more of a discount on purchases.
If you look up at the above prices - you'll notice where the 15% saving comes from - it's by adding the three bonuses together, and if you then add on the staking
More use cases for AVA
Just look at all the planned developments....
One thing that really stands out for me from the list above is the 'review rewards' - an obvious idea, to reward users for writing reviews, nice!
Tokenonomics
There are total of 64 million tokens and a buy back scheme and token burn. Every three months Travala buys back a sum AVA proportional to its revenue and burns it, and they'll keep doing so until the total supply is down to 40 000 000.
You can see the burns on their block explorer.
Increasing revenue
Travala seems to be on the up and up - revenues are increasing, they recently partnered with Expedia , the ads programme has hardly started, and this just looks like an awesome project!
Travala - worth more than Hive?
Well it's hard to make a comparison between the two coins - they have very different functionalities, and because Hive is much broader in scope it has the potential to reach more people.
However, while AVA is focussed purely on travel and experiences, that's still a huge market, and that combined with the low circulating supply means the value of token is probably just going to keep on increasing!
And possibly because AVA is so focused, that is its strength - it's a VERY clear selling point - buy and stake AVA and then use it to pay for flights and holidays and you will save money.
I mean, who doesn't want to save 15% on their holiday>?
A Potential limit to the price?
I guess what will limit the value of AVA is the value of savings you can get through staking, which depends on how many flights and holidays you take. If you're very forward thinking then $10 000 on 5000 AVA seems reasonable IF that's going to save you 15% on $10 000 worth of holidays every year.
Then you've made your money back in savings after 6 years, plus a 24% return on what you've staked.
And that calculation would put AVA at $2, which seems reasonable, with room for it to go up from there just based on its primary use-case.
And there is plenty of speculative potential here too of course!
If you want to read more about AVA - here's trending for the tag on LEO!
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
AVA is awesome, but it can't really shine in the current situation.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
The fact that it's doing so well even with lockdowns, speaks volumes to its potential.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Very true!
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Lol. It's already shining despite Corona. Wait until this shit is over by march.
I know. It's a good project.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I love the concept of this business, I hope to own AVA at some point and use their services in the future! I think it's generally a tough time for tourism and the travel business buuuuut maybe the timing will work out with Travala. The pandemic will start winding down in a couple years right as this company finds it market fit. One can hope anyways.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I think you could well be right, Covid is possibly giving us a buying opportunity!
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Very good article you wrote ! Plus you got appraisal from the 2 AVA masters haha.
Still have to complete my smart 5 before it’s too late.
COVID is actually giving a chance to slow investors to enter because without it would have moon in a snap.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Glad to hear you're in on it! Something good about Covid!
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
When corona time ends it will get even better, now is the best opportunity to buy AVA. Also, if you like to travel then it will save you ton of money.
I expect AVA to worth $10 easily and after corona could get higher.
Nice article by the way.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Hey cheers, I think the potential for growth is certainly good - and something else - it kind of advertises itself!
Interesting but the travel industry is a bit fucked right now due to COVID-19. Worth a look though and probably better than SpankChain.
As far as I'm aware it's the only token focused explicitly on travel.
And a great name that makes sense, like SpankChain, at least they got a good name!
It's a cool idea, just bad timing with what's going on in the world. I said to @bingbabe if ETH ever goes above 1k I would sell 3 and we would go somewhere warm on holiday.
I sold the 3 ETH but we can't do anything, it's annoying.
It'll probably be warm up north before you're allowed to go anywhere abroad!
And this is why you should get in now while it's still cheap. March is close, this Corona shit will be over. See the comments above by empotedrat, and maybe invest in ava now or regret it later.🚀🚀🚀
You do have a point!
I guess the grow of ava in lockdown is already a good signal. Wait till the world opens up again.
I got me some from hive and currently not regretting it indeed
Yes me too, it's one of the few things I've sold Hive, and LEO for.
Good luck to the both of us for a tidy profit!
Just the 24% return seems like a good deal, let alone the savings on travel. I don't have 10k to invest, but I might start building a small position. Seems like there is good upward potential in the price too.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I think there is, and I do like a coin with a use case!
I missed the boat - at what price you bought and how much ?
you haven't you just were greedy and waited for 50 cents. current price is still cheap. see you next year at 100$
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Nothing like greedy man 😀 You can say a bad investor , yes, definitely I am a bad investor who has invested only in hive. I curse myself as well - having 10k $ sitting in exchange since March 2020, had I taken best decisions - it would have become 100k - but at the end, its what it is.
just messing with you :*
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Careful now, messing with people is illegal.
Unless you're Wall Street or the FED (as if I need to distinguish between them) in which case it's FINE!
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I got in at about $0.70 - I bought about a 1000. Just enough for SMART L2.
One of the best decisions of my life. AVA looks primed for take off.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Feel so sad for not catching up on this post on time, I have been seeing the AVA in some discussions but I confused it for AAVE and the prices were totally different which made me look away at that time. Being sure about AVA now and the price at almost $2 is not really encouraging for the investment I want to make but its better to buy now than be sorry later. Thank you for putting out all the use cases of AVA, it helped in understanding the token more better
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta