- Sam Bankman-Fried has clarified his belief over Bitcoin’s use as a currency
- The Financial Times used an interview as a stick to beat Bitcoin with last month
- Bankman-Fried said that Bitcoin can be useful as a currency when used in conjunction with a scaling solution
Sam Bankman-Fried has clarified his position on Bitcoin’s potential as a means of payment, reinforcing his belief that it can scale with layer 2 solutions such as the Lightning Network. Bankman-Fried was interviewed by the Financial Times last month where he was quoted as saying that Bitcoin is “not a payments network and it is not a scaling network”, adding that its future was as “an asset, a commodity and a store of value”. However, in a new interview he has clarified this position, saying that Bitcoin can be a payment network, but only with scaling.
Financial Times Interview Damaged SBF Reputation
Bankman-Fried’s reputation suffered a knock within the industry when he appeared to take the view of the crypto-hating Financial Times when he agreed with them that Bitcoin no longer worked as an alternative payment method, while also criticising its environmental impact.
The FTX CEO seemed unprepared for the angle the Financial Times would take when dealing with him, which is amazing given its fervent anti-crypto stance. Bankman-Fried dutifully fell into its net, leading to headlines of him denouncing Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Scaling Essential for Use as Currency
Yesterday, Bankman-Fried used another interview to clarify his stance, stating that ‘pure’ Bitcoin cannot function as a forum of currency, which is undeniably true, but it is still useful as a form of payment when used in conjunction with a layer 2 scaling solution, or if it is wrapped in some way:
interview today, asked if BTC can scale for payments
for transparency, my answer:
1) BTC can absolutely be payment asset, on lightning, L2, or wrapped
2) BTC chain not intended to scale to millions of TPS, so won’t be global payments directly
3) bullish on blockchain payments— SBF (@SBF_FTX) June 16, 2022
While the clarification is welcome, it comes a month after the damaging headlines, well after the damage was done and the Financial Times got another laugh at crypto’s expense.
