Section · AVAT — Nasdaq: AVAT · CIK 0002092446
Avalanche Treasury Corp.
The treasury that borrowed. It holds roughly 3.5% of all circulating AVAX, has drawn $33M against it, and disclosed a going-concern note in its first 10-Q — withdrawn in its second. Its paper trail stops one inch short of the chain. Its twin, AVAX One, is covered separately.
06 — People
The names behind the ticker
A treasury company is only as good as the people steering it. Every name on the tab was researched across filings, press, papers and the subjects’ own accounts, then identity-checked against a two-source standard. The most consequential tie, who controls the vote, turned out to be written into the filings themselves.
The facts that change how you read this company
Dragonfly controls AVAT’s vote outright
AVAT · confirmedDragonfly Digital Management is named as the “Seller” in the merger and holds 100% of the Class B, the only voting shares. The public Class A that trades on Nasdaq has no vote. A Dragonfly general partner, Rob Hadick, is also a director, and the S-4 states he is not independent.
The ecosystem sells to, advises, and personally owns the buyer
AVAT · confirmedThe Avalanche Foundation sold AVAT $200M of AVAX at a discount. Avalanche’s creator, Emin Gün Sirer, serves on AVAT’s paid advisory board and personally holds about 2.6M shares. Ava Labs’ Chief Business Officer was a director of AVAT itself until he resigned, three weeks after the 38% debut drop.
Two pedigrees, two playbooks
bothAVAT is run by a Susquehanna crypto veteran (“Wall Street’s Crypto King,” per CNBC in 2018) with an Ava Labs, Dragonfly, Aave and Blockworks advisory board. AVX is a Citi structured-products financier’s reverse merger into a failed ag-tech shell, fronted publicly by Scaramucci. His role appears nowhere in the proxy.
The people
Emin Gün Sirer
Advisory boardThe scientist who built Avalanche.
NSF CAREER award, Popular Science “Brilliant Ten.” His 2003 Karma paper is documented as the first peer-to-peer currency with proof-of-work minting; his 2013 “selfish mining” paper is a landmark. He advises AVAT and holds about 2.6M shares in his own name.
The chain’s creator owns stock in a vehicle that buys the chain’s token. No other link on the map is that close.
Rob Hadick
DirectorDragonfly General Partner, confirmed.
Leads Dragonfly’s stablecoin/payments investing; appointed to the CFTC’s Digital Asset Markets subcommittee in Dec 2025. Dragonfly is the deal’s “Seller” and holds the voting class.
@HadickM
AVAT’s own S-4 says he “will not be considered independent.”
John Nahas
Former directorAva Labs’ Chief Business Officer, confirmed.
Full legal name “Sarkees John Nahas.” He served on the AVAT board from the October 2025 deal until resigning effective July 1, 2026, three weeks after the 38% debut drop and one day before AVAT signed its Galaxy loan agreement. His filed resignation letter (Ex. 17.1) is a pre-drafted legal template in which the entity-name brackets were never filled in. It waives claims and gives no reason; the company’s 8-K adds the standard line that it was not told of any disagreement. In August 2026 avat.com lists him on the advisory board, so the Ava Labs tie outlived the board seat.
@JohnNahas84
The record is silent: a boilerplate exit, timed just ahead of the loan signing and the insider-resale registration. No filing gives the reason.
Bart Smith
CEO & director“Wall Street’s Crypto King” (CNBC, 2018).
He ran Susquehanna’s digital-asset group from 2014 and was CEO of Susquehanna Crypto before leaving in Sept 2025 to build AVAT. He went to Vanderbilt and was a regular institutional-crypto voice on CNBC in the 2018 cycle.
@gbartsmith
The “13 years at SIG” figure is self-reported; the SEC bio omits all pre-2025 dates.
Laine Litman
COOBuilt Hidden Road; it sold to Ripple for $1.25B.
President, then CAO, of Hidden Road as it grew from 27 to 180 people, through its Ripple acquisition, before co-founding AVAT with Bart Smith. Earlier, per the company’s own bio, senior roles at Virtu Financial (formerly KCG) and futures desks at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Goldman Sachs and UBS. She files under “Laine Mihalchick Moljo” and posts as Laine Litman; the two are the same person, verified by matching Hidden Road dates. She also holds the CEO’s power of attorney for his Section 16 filings.
Kate Ruberti
Head of MarketingHired from the lender.
Joined AVAT in April 2026, two months before the listing, from FalconX, where she led social and digital marketing. FalconX Charlie, Inc. is the $25M open-loan lender that financed AVAT’s closing costs a month later. Earlier at Prosek Partners and Edelman Smithfield. Source: her avat.com bio; she appears in no filing.
A staff move from the lender to the borrower the month before the loan. The bio page is the only record of it.
How these names connect to the other company’s, including the single firm that touches both, is drawn as a network in the head-to-head.
What we could not close
- Why did Ava Labs’ CBO resign from the AVAT board? The record runs out at the filed letter (Ex. 17.1): a reason-free form letter with unfilled brackets, falling one day before the Galaxy loan signing and nine days before the insider-resale S-1. The timing is documented; the motive is not.
- AVAT CFO Sean Ostrower joined about 3 months before listing with no announcement. The 424B3 and avat.com now name prior employers (DriveWealth, Tradeweb, Geller & Company, Barclays, Bank of America Merrill Lynch) but still no dates, and he has essentially no public footprint.
- How and at what price did Emin Gün Sirer acquire the roughly 2.5M AVAT shares that did not come from his advisory agreement?
- Several important career claims remain self-reported only (Smith’s SIG tenure; a Nahas acquisition claim). They are flagged and are never published as fact.
A dossier that only lists what it proved is selling something. These are the threads still open. Anything that lacked a second source was left out entirely.