FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried: Solana Has a Real Shot at Becoming the Next Bitcoin

The Founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX – Sam Bankman-Fried – believes Solana (SOL) could become the next most dominant digital asset project. He added that Avalanche (AVAX) is another blockchain network that can climb to the top.

‘I’m Optimistic on Solana’

In a recent interview for Kitco News, the 29-year-old American shared his thoughts on the current cryptocurrency landscape and which projects could outlive a potential market crash.

Asked if this was the last bull-run in the sector, Bankman-Fried asserted that there will always be crashes followed by price increases. In the next two years, he expects to “see substantial institutional adoption of cryptocurrencies,” which will benefit the entire ecosystem.

FTX’s CEO did not rule out the possibility of experiencing a 2018-style bear market. Nonetheless, he thinks that the blockchain protocols with loyal supporters and important use-cases would not vanish even in such harsh conditions. Hype-related projects such as memecoins are more likely to plummet:

“The projects that you see surviving the best are the ones which have huge really loyal followers and the ones that have really important use-cases. I think the ones that seem more like hype-driven often crash the hardest.”

Bankman-Fried believes Solana fits into the description of a meaningful project outlining its ability to scale millions of transactions per second. As such, it could become a key part of the financial network and even turn into the new Bitcoin or Ethereum.

“Solana has a real shot at doing so, which I think is really exciting.”

It is worth noting that Solana is not his only pick as he’s also a believer in Avalanche:

“I think that there are other tokens out there as well that are aiming to scale a bit, and Avalanche is one of them.”

FTX CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried. Source: Bloomberg

The Squid Game Saga

In October, the Squid Game token (SQUID) became one of the most popular assets in the cryptocurrency space, and many people invested in it. The enthusiasm around it was so massive that at one point, it surged by 110,000% in a matter of a few days. However, at the beginning of November, it got rug-pulled by its creators, and its price tanked by 99.99%.

According to Bankman-Fried, such shady projects will always exist in the space. He said people should never invest more than they are “willing to lose.”

He pointed out two major red flags on the SQUID saga: the creators of the token were not “affiliated with the Netflix Series,” and they were anonymous:

“If you don’t know who that person is and you have no trust in them, there’s always going to be the risk of a rug pull. If they don’t own any tokens and can’t mint any more tokens, there’s a lot less than they could do potentially to gain value at the expense of the purchasers of the token.”