Original｜Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author: Wenser (@wenser 2010 )
After the last time he released an image with the word "ALT" which was interpreted by the market as "the alt season has come", Binance founder CZ directly supported the "Travala" project last night. "I invested before the COVID-19 pandemic and the crypto winter, and I have continued to invest until now, BUILD."
Previously, the price of Travala’s AVA token was only $0.74, with a market value of about $40 million. Affected by CZ’s “open call”, market funds moved quickly, and a large number of buy orders poured in. The price of AVA once exceeded $3.5, with the highest increase approaching 400%. As of writing, the price of AVA remains around $3.1, with a 24-hour increase of up to 306%.
Travala claims to be a crypto-friendly travel platform that supports more than 100 cryptocurrencies for hotel and flight bookings. Odaily Planet Daily will analyze the project in this article.
Travala: $100 million in annual revenue, the “dark horse of the travel industry”
Founded in 2017, Travala is a global travel booking platform built on blockchain technology that supports cryptocurrency payments as well as traditional payment methods. Users can use the platform to book more than 2.2 million hotels in more than 230 countries and regions around the world, flights from more than 600 airlines, and more than 410,000 diversified travel activities. The platform also has varying degrees of cooperation with well-known travel platforms such as Booking.com, Priceline, Kayak, Skyscanner, and Google Hotels.
Juan Otero, co-founder and CEO of Travala, revealed in an interview that in the first quarter of 2020, the platform's total revenue was less than $1 million, and the annual revenue for that year was about $4.4 million. In the past few years, Travala's business has grown rapidly. In the first quarter of this year, the platform's revenue exceeded $22 million.
On December 11, Travala officially cited media reports that "Travala is about to launch a Bitcoin reserve plan" and issued a statement saying: "Travala has reached a milestone of $100 million in annual revenue. The platform will continue to promote the adoption of cryptocurrencies in the tourism industry and announce the AVA token and Bitcoin treasury reserve strategy."
At 11:49 pm on December 12, CZ retweeted Travala’s official tweet and directly revealed his identity as an “early investor in the project.”
CZ is a clear “caller”
After CZ’s open support: AVA’s “market value fluctuation magic”
While many people were still wondering "What kind of project is Travala?", a group of traders with a keen sense of the market had already found Travala's project token AVA from Binance, and were pleasantly surprised to find that such a "RWA project" with a 7-year history and real business income had a token circulation market value of only 40 million US dollars.
After CZ’s public order, the price of AVA quickly rose from $0.74 to around $1.5, but its market capitalization remained at $42 million, unchanged. More importantly, this token is only listed on Binance spot, and futures shorting is not possible, and other exchanges have not listed the project.
AVA token information at around 12:00 on the evening of the 12th
As the market continued to buy, the price of AVA rose rapidly in just a few hours, and at 5 am today, it rose above $3.5. As of press time, the price of AVA tokens has stabilized at around $3.2, the market value has increased to $307 million, the market value ranking has risen to 363rd, and the 24-hour trading volume has exceeded $560 million.
It is worth mentioning that the circulation and market value of AVA are similar to those of the ACX token previously listed on Binance. The market value data also experienced short-term and drastic fluctuations, which is suspected to be a problem with Coinmarketcap's related statistical data. Users will also see relevant risk warnings after entering the AVA token interface for the first time.
In October this year, Binance explicitly introduced risk warning banners and pop-up notifications for projects on the platform, including AVA, CHZ, ENJ and other tokens. "Risk warning banners and pop-up notifications will also be introduced for the following tokens whose token economic models have undergone significant changes in the past 18 months."
AVA token Binance interface
The former "negative example" has now transformed into the "hottest star on the platform".
The bumpy road that took 7 years to support 100+ cryptocurrency payments
According to Odaily Planet Daily Express, as early as December 2018, Travala officially announced that it would add XRP as a payment method on its platform. Subsequently, Travala began its 7-year journey of "building a crypto-friendly platform that supports cryptocurrency payments."
In December 2018, Travala announced that it would support DASH and EOS for hotel reservations.
In February 2019, Travala announced that it would accept BTC to book 550,000 hotels, and users could travel to 82,300 destinations;
In March 2019, Travala announced that it would accept TRX and LTC related reservation payments.
Subsequently, BCH, BNB, XLM, and ADA also became payment options. In September of the same year, the platform officially announced that it would move from the NEO blockchain to the Binance Chain and begin to repurchase and destroy its native token AVA.
In January 2020, Travala announced support for stablecoin Tether (USDT) payments.
As of July 2021, Travala had revenue of $9.8 million in the second quarter of that year and accepted more than 40 cryptocurrencies, Binance Pay, and fiat payment methods; cryptocurrency purchases accounted for approximately 70% of the platform's business.
In June 2023, Travala officially announced that its total revenue in May of that year was nearly 5.5 million US dollars, including accommodation reservations, air ticket reservations, activity reservations and concierge service reservations; 78% of all reservations were paid with cryptocurrencies. Among them, the proportions of USDT, ETH, BTC, USDC and AVA (Travala.com platform token) were 24%, 8%, 7%, 5% and 5% respectively, the proportion of payment using Binance Pay was 13%, and the proportion of payment using other cryptocurrencies was 16%. In addition, reservations from Binance Marketplace accounted for 3%.
In June this year, thanks to the rapid development of the TON ecosystem, Travala officially announced support for TON payments. In September, Travala officially announced that it had integrated with Solana, expanding to a third network in addition to Ethereum and BNB Chain.
Travala CEO Juan Otero said: "This integration will allow users to book flights, hotels and accommodations using Solana-based assets, including SOL, USDT and USDC, among others. Users can also receive SOL travel rewards of up to 10% of the value of their bookings through its loyalty program, which previously supported BTC and Travala's native token AVA to pay rewards." This is also the reason why the official Solana account in the comment section posted a congratulatory message when Travala officially announced the "$100 million revenue milestone."
Travala CEO
It can be seen that since its inception, Travala has been making steady progress in its crypto-friendly support: the increase in payment currencies, the increase in booking areas and hotels, and the increase in the number of travel activities are all examples.
In addition, users can enjoy different levels of discounts when booking travel on Travala, such as:
Depending on membership tier, users can enjoy direct discounts of up to 5%;
Crypto Rebates: After completing a trip, users can earn up to 5% cashback in AVA tokens, and Platinum and Diamond members can earn up to 10% back in Bitcoin for bookings made through Travala.com, which can be used for future bookings or transferred off the platform;
AVA Payment Discount: Pay your booking in full with AVA tokens and enjoy up to an additional 3% discount.
AVA Smart Rewards: All members except Smart Basic can receive up to 6% annualized AVA token rewards for completing specific tasks or using AVA on the platform every quarter.
The latest news is that the platform has launched an "invitation rebate program", "helping others to book using cryptocurrency, users can earn up to 5.5% commission on each booking order."
It is worth mentioning that the AVA token hit an all-time high of $6.45 in April 2021, and then fell below $2 in December 2021. After that, it fluctuated up and down and gradually came to the recent price of around $0.7.
As for whether it can return to new highs in the future, in addition to the support of key figures such as CZ, it also depends on whether the continued repurchase of AVA tokens and the BTC reserve plan can effectively boost market confidence.
A quick look at Binance's investment projects in the 2022 industry winter
According to Rootdata and relevant information of the Binance platform, the projects invested by Binance Labs before 2022 and whose tokens have been listed on Binance mainly include the following information. In addition to the conventional L1 public chain, DEX, and GameFi projects, the only tokens that can be involved in the "CZ investment concept" are currently AUDIO, KAVA, CTK, ANKR, etc.
Considering the randomness of CZ’s orders and the high risk of ambushing these tokens, please be sure to choose carefully and pay attention to the risks.
AI sorts out relevant information for reference only
