The Houston Texans – a professional American football team – have entered into an exclusive partnership with the Houston-based cryptocurrency company, BitWallet. The partnership will allow the team to begin accepting crypto as payment for single-game NFL suites. Effective immediately, BitWallet will act as an intermediary for crypto payments to the Texans. This allows digital assets to immediately be converted into U.S. dollars. The first to purchase a suite using digital currency was EWR Digital, a digital marketing agency. "We…
views
Sam Bankman Fried Offers New Year’s Resolutions For Crypto Industry
Though the crypto industry has made unprecedented strides in 2021, various hurdles limit its development. Sam Bankman Fried – CEO of crypto exchange FTX – recently outlined some key issues he thinks the community should address heading into the new year. Ranging from regulation to transaction throughput, he is ready for “slow, hard work” in fleshing out a truly decentralized internet.
Where We Are
The young billionaire detailed his thoughts in a lengthy Twitter thread on Monday. He said it was his first extensive piece of writing about the industry beyond just FTX.
He began by recognizing what crypto had already achieved. These include a “solid user base” of 200 million people and use-cases ranging from payments to NFTs to social media. Notably, he emphasized intelligent contracts as an innovation that’s hard to overstate. After all, “it’s what brought crypto from digital gold to web3 / metaverse / DeFi, etc.,” he said.
His language is undoubtedly a reference to crypto’s evolution beyond just Bitcoin. Also, he refers to other protocols and chains with more programmability. While Bitcoin is frequently called “digital gold” by investors, some have named Ether “digital oil” for its usefulness in other applications.
SBF also acknowledged various scaling solutions powering the space, including the lightning network and rollups. However, he still doesn’t believe that current solutions offering up to 50k transactions per second are enough for specific industrial applications.
The Regulation Problem
The regulation also remains a longstanding issue. As he states, the tension between the industry and regulators grows as both continue to leave discussions in frustration. In September, a perfect example of this came from Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, when he lashed out at the SEC for being uncooperative.
At the moment, SBF agrees that processes for token distribution, platform registration, and stablecoins remain hazy in many jurisdictions. This makes institutional involvement in crypto difficult, necessary for its growth.
Earlier this month, a collection of crypto CEOs, including SBF, met with the House Financial Services Community to discuss industry rules. While there, Bitfury CEO Brian Brooks pointed out apparent contradictions in government policy around stablecoins. However, many regulators claim that stablecoins pose a threat to the financial system’s integrity and the supremacy of the dollar.
SBF proposed an auditing framework to ensure that stablecoins are backed 1-1 by US dollars within issuers’ reserves in his thread.