In a Monday interview, crypto millionaire Sam Bankman-Fried stated that Bitcoin as a payment network had no future. Bankman-Fried is the CEO and creator of FTX, one of the world’s most prominent bitcoin exchanges.
Sam Bankman-Fried stated that he does not believe Bitcoin can function as a payment network, citing the high energy costs of its proof-of-work algorithm as well as the fact that it cannot support millions of transactions per second. However, he believes it has potential as a store of value.
The thirty-year-old billionaire criticized Bitcoin’s underlying proof-of-work system for its high environmental costs and inefficiency in verifying transactions. He claimed the network could not handle millions of transactions per second. Users may, however, move Bitcoin to layer two payment systems like Lightning, according to him. Proof-of-stake networks, he added, overcome these problems.
To be clear I also said that it _does_ have potential as a store of value.
The BTC network can’t sustain thousands/millions of TPS, although BTC can be xfered on lightning/L2s/etc. https://t.co/7ghQzz7eXa
— SBF (@SBF_FTX) May 16, 2022
It would be difficult to convert Bitcoin to a proof-of-stake algorithm. As a reminder, Ethereum developers have been considering a switch to PoS for several years, despite various setbacks.
While Bankman-Fried does not consider Bitcoin to be a viable payment method, he does feel it has promise as an asset, a commodity, and a store of value, akin to gold.
Following the collapse of stablecoin Terra last week, the whole crypto market experienced a significant drop. Bitcoin has already rebounded significantly, although it is still down more than 50% from its November high.
