Avanti to launch in October with new bank-issued digital asset. The cryptofriendly bank announced Thursday that its application was approved on 15 July by the Wyoming Banking Division. Avanti will launch in the fall, as the regulator has accelerated its application phase timetable.
Avanti announced its plans for issuing Avit in the same announcement, a programmable digital asset that can only be issued by banks and will be viewed as cash equivalent.
With Blockstream as the development partner for the bank, Wyoming blockchain advocate Caitlin Long said in an interview that “one could presume that the Bitcoin blockchain would be involved,” but couldn’t elaborate any further.
If Avanti’s charter application is approved in October, the bank will be the only financial institution capable of issuing Avit. While Avit would not be pegged one-to-one to the U.S. dollar – because it’s a new digital asset, not a digital representation of a real-world asset – the currency would be 100% backed by a reserve of liquid traditional U.S. assets.
Avanti claims that Avit will not face the same delayed issues of settlement and chargeback as traditional fiat payments. Because an automated clearing house (ACH) transaction can be reversed several weeks after a payment is made, exchanges and other asset service providers often hold cash from traders for several days, Long said.
“There’s a lot of counterparty risk in OTC trading of digital assets,” Long said. “Everyone wants to settle second. What we’re doing is offering the ability for both sides to settle simultaneously.”
[image: Aleksi Räisä]
