SBF ‘optimistic’ about institutional crypto adoption in 2022

FTX crypto exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried is optimistic that clarity provided by regulators around the world will stimulate institutional adoption rates for crypto this and subsequent years.

In a Jan. 3 interview with Bloomberg, SBF talked about crypto regulations, institutional adoption, and the Metaverse. Despite the rocky end to 2021 for markets, SBF is “optimistic” about 2022.

“The things that make me optimistic basically are more regulatory clarity in the US and globally which I think could help a ton on institutional adoption.”

When asked how he thought institutional adoption of crypto could accelerate in the future, he responded, “A lot of it depends on exactly what happens on the regulatory front as well.”

His view on regulatory clarity encouraging more institutional growth in crypto echoes the views of Beili Baraki of Nansen and Nikos Andrikogiannopoulos of Metrika as reported by Cointelegraph on Jan. 3.

He offered the possibility that if jurisdictions “feel like they’re getting regulatory clarity,” that adoption could come in a “tidal wave.” However, rather than the tidal wave scenario, “it’s going to be a long process, probably stretched out over a few years,” he added.

Additionally, he noted “a lot of different governments announced that there will be regulatory frameworks coming out over the next year.” Several governments have been hard at work sorting out their appropriate regulatory frameworks for cryptocurrency.

Related: The number of countries banning crypto has doubled in three years

Another source of SBF’s optimism seemed to come from the vigor with which institutions are starting to flood into the crypto ecosystem. He said,

“Basically every large financial institution I've talked to, every large bank, every large investment bank, pension funds, they're all eyeing this sector.”

When asked what a combination of cryptocurrency and the metaverse would look like, the crypto billionaire pointed out that with the billions of gamers worldwide, nonfungible tokens (NFT) in video games will likely be one of the largest roles that crypto plays in the metaverse.

There were about 3.2 billion gamers in the world in 2021 according to Statista. However, the crypto gaming industry comprises just 1.2 million gamers according to DappRadar. This suggests that the integration of cryptocurrency with mainstream gaming would provide a tremendous boost to global crypto adoption, reconfirming SBF's prediction.