LONDON, UK — CruTrade, a new platform that lets collectors trade wine instantly without moving the bottle, today announced its public launch. The result: secure, instant trades in a market long defined by delays, opacity, and spoiled wine.

The fine wine secondary market is valued at $9 billion today and could reach $25 billion by 2030. Yet collectors still face limited access and fees that can eat up a third of every trade. Spoilage adds another layer of risk: wine is highly sensitive to heat, and even brief exposure can cause permanent damage. In one study of 5,000 shipments, 15% faced extreme heat above 30°C, enough to ruin a bottle in less than a day. Even at a modest 5% risk per trade, the odds of damage climb to more than 25% after just five trades.*

CruTrade changes that. Bottles stay put in temperature and humidity-controlled storage while digital ownership transfers on-chain, verified by RFID (radio-frequency identification) and recorded securely on the blockchain with an immutable record of provenance and custody.

“We built CruTrade to do one thing well: protect the wine in every bottle. By recording provenance on the blockchain, we’ve made trading faster, fairer, and safer for collectors.”

CruTrade is powered by Avalanche, a leading blockchain for tokenizing real-world assets, enabling a new standard for secure, provenance-assured trading of luxury goods, starting with fine wine.

“With CruTrade, I can trust every bottle and trade instantly when I want to rebalance my cellar.” said Sean L, a long-time collector based in Hong Kong.

CruTrade was also built with producers in mind, ensuring they remain connected to their wines and protected from mishandling. As Burgundy winemaker Theo Dancer notes, “The issue isn’t resale. It’s what happens to the wine in between. CruTrade lets collectors unlock value without risking the bottle or compromising quality.”

CruTrade enters the market with a clear advantage through its exclusive relationship with Crurated. Since 2021, Crurated has tokenized more than $60 million of fine wine, making it the world’s largest tokenized supply of provenance-verified bottles. CruTrade’s exclusive access to this inventory ensures a deep, trustworthy selection from day one.

Avalanche’s high-performance blockchain, known for speed, security, and real-world applications, gives collectors confidence that every trade is instant and immutable. “Fine wine is a natural fit for Avalanche’s mission to tokenize the world’s assets. CruTrade’s access to provenance-perfect bottles, paired with Avalanche’s infrastructure, delivers an unparalleled experience for collectors,” said John Nahas, Chief Business Officer at Ava Labs.

CruTrade is betting on a reset in how luxury goods are traded. Collectors want more than scarcity; they want proof. By making wine digitally native and tradable, CruTrade unlocks trapped capital, enables frictionless trade, and delivers the transparency producers and collectors have been waiting for. 

Looking ahead, CruTrade plans to expand provenance-assured, collector-to-collector transfers across bonded warehouses worldwide, and power a hospitality service that lets restaurants offer rare bottles via venue-branded digital menus. Think of it as cloud kitchens for wine: a flexible model that reduces cellar costs, lowers prices for diners, and ensures more bottles are enjoyed at their best.

Without CruTrade, buying and selling fine wine often means inflated fees, unclear provenance, and constant risk that what you buy isn’t what you hoped to taste. Producers lose touch with their work, and collectors pay more while drinking less. CruTrade removes the fear, cost, and friction so every bottle tells a story, not a cautionary tale.

More information and sign-ups at crutrade.io.

About CruTrade
CruTrade is the marketplace for provenance-verified fine wine. Powered by blockchain and RFID, it lets collectors trade rare bottles instantly without moving them, reducing fees, preventing spoilage, and preserving provenance. Bottles remain in professional storage while ownership transfers securely on-chain. CruTrade is the only marketplace that returns value to producers by sharing resale proceeds. With exclusive access to the world’s largest supply of tokenized fine wine, including bottles from more than 250 top producers across Burgundy, Bordeaux, Champagne, Piedmont, and Tuscany, CruTrade is redefining fine-wine access, ownership, and consumption. Visit crutrade.io for more information. 

About Avalanche
Avalanche is an ultra-fast, low-latency blockchain platform designed for builders who need high performance at scale. The network’s architecture allows for the creation of sovereign, efficient and fully interoperable public and private layer 1 (L1) blockchains which leverage the Avalanche Consensus Mechanism to achieve high throughput and near-instant transaction finality. The ease and speed of launching an L1, and the breadth of architectural customization choices, make Avalanche the perfect environment for a composable multi-chain future. Supported by a global community of developers and validators, Avalanche offers a fast, low-cost environment for building decentralized applications (dApps). With its combination of speed, flexibility, and scalability, Avalanche is the platform of choice for innovators pushing the boundaries of blockchain technology.

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‍*Methodology: Heat-exposure findings reflect analysis of 5,000 global wine shipments; compounded risk estimates illustrate cumulative probability under a 5% per-trade assumption. More information and references available here.