For the CEO of crypto exchange FTX, bitcoin is at an impasse


Thibaut Keutchayan

May 23, 2022 at 8:25 a.m.

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Sam Bakman-Fried © © Financial Times

FTX’s young CEO blasted bitcoin © The Financial Times

FTX may be a young cryptocurrency exchange platform booming, its chairman and CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, is not a fervent defender of the bitcoin (BTC).

Among his justifications, Mr. Bankman-Fried invokes in particular the inefficiency of this crypto-currency as well as an excessive environmental impact.

Reasons invoked that do not date from yesterday

In an interview given to FinancialTimes on May 17, FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried sees the future of bitcoin as a “ asset, commodity or store of value rather than a cryptocurrency, while comparing it to the way gold is used today.

First, BTC would be “ ineffective “, which would not allow him to make a ” payment system ” in large scale. It must be said that it would be at best possible to process three transactions in BTC per second, when the Visa system, for its part, would be able to process 56,000/second, although it does not have to perform than 2000/second currently.

This is enough to delight countries such as El Salvador, which have given bitcoin legal tender over the past year, and to join, for Bankman-Fried, the positioning of international structures such as the World Bank on the subject.

Indeed, in addition to its volatility, Mr. Bankman-Fried in turn evokes the environmental impact of bitcoin. Very often singled out for its consumption of electricity, but also of various electronic devices and components necessary to mine it, BTC and its miners have notably suffered restrictions in certain countries, such as Kosovo. Others, such as China, have outright banned mining on their territory.

Meanwhile, the value of bitcoin continues to fall

Rather than “proof of work” by mining, the CEO of FTX wants “proof of stake” to be a more widely used alternative, in line with the Ethereum blockchain and one of the main crypto competitors in the world. bitcoin, Ether (ETH). But in any case, even if Sam Bankman-Fried tried to justify himself on Twitter by reporting that the FinancialTimes has carefully sought to highlight its most controversial comments on BTC, this will not increase the confidence in this crypto of buyers and sellers on its platform.

FTX, valued at nearly $32 billion last February, remains one of the leading crypto exchanges, but when it comes to the value of bitcoin, the dynamic is quite different. This Sunday, May 22, 2022 at 8 p.m., one BTC is exchanged for 28,314 euros. A very modest sum compared to the 56,278 euros/piece reached on November 12, 2021, since you have to go back to July 16, 2021 to find such a low value.

On the same subject :
Bitcoin drops below $30,000, should we be worried for good?

Source : The Financial Times



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