Sam Bankman-Fried Sees No Future in Bitcoin Payments

In an interview with the Financial Times, the CEO of FTX said that Bitcoin has no future as a payments network.

To pay or not to pay, that is the question.

The question has plagued bitcoin holders as they struggle to reconcile bitcoin as a means of storing value with bitcoin as a means of payment.

FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried came out clearly in favor of the former in an interview with the Financial Times. He said that Bitcoin has no future as a payments network due to its inefficiency and high environmental costs. According to SBF, proof-of-stake blockchains are better suited as payment solutions since they are cheaper and less power-hungry.

However, Bankman-Fried also said that Bitcoin has potential as “an asset, a commodity and a store of value.” He reaffirmed this stance in a tweet.

Commentators were quick to notice that Bankman-Fried has recently been fairly critical of the industry that has made him a billionaire.

A few weeks ago, SBF famously tried to explain yield farming and compared it to being a Ponzi scheme.

Even though SBF did not take the Lightning Network into account, his comments are backed up by some data. For example, only 40% of Salvadorians use the country’s Chivo Bitcoin Wallet, even though BTC has been legal tender in El Salvador for several months. Indeed, many investors prefer to hold on to their coins, which is why the HODL mentality is particularly strong in the Bitcoin community.

Bankman-Fried’s comments come shortly after news broke that he acquired a 7.6% stake in the trading app Robinhood. The company’s stock rallied on the news, and FTX’s CEO also has close ties to Solana – a layer one blockchain with high transaction speeds that might be better suited as a payment network if not for its repeated outages.