The past few weeks have been busy for the cryptocurrency industry.
Solana, one of the most-hyped blockchains, went offline for close to 17 hours. Washington’s regulators flexed their muscles on the crypto industry. And an insider NFT (non-fungible tokens) trading scandal rocked the scenes.
FTX CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried and Brett Harrison, president of FTX.US — the US affiliate of FTX — gave insights on the state of the crypto market especially on regulatory developments, Solana’s blackout, and the rise of insider NFTs scandals.
More regulations over crypto exchanges
In recent weeks, the US Securities and Exchange (SEC) has been pushing for more regulations on the cryptocurrency industry.
Harrison noticed that public disputes against the US financial regulator have made the regulator more aggressive. He said that public cryptocurrency disputes are now plentiful thus compelling the regulator to move in and flex their might.
So, it is obvious SEC officials together with Commodity Futures Trading Commission agents are gearing up to create a trading policy framework — meant to regulate the booming and unregulated cryptocurrency market.
Harrison also added regulations are necessary and inevitable. As they’ll help create a fair and conducive trading ecosystem, which will allow for more growth and innovation.
On Solana’s meltdown
Touted as the year’s fastest-rising crypto, Solana, experienced a 17-hour blackout that disrupted the selling and buying of the crypto token.
The hitch was later fixed and trading was restored. It was blamed on many people flooding the token’s network with transactions.
FTX CEO, Bankman-Fried said that when you’re planning on scaling up a massive blockchain such as Solana, be ready to test the limits of the network. About 400,000 transactions per second took place on Solana’s network, which is roughly ten times more than any public blockchain can handle at a go.
Although the problem is now fixed, Bankman-Fried thinks it’s a learning lesson but a frustrating one for Solana’s team. That said, he believes the hitch was not “particularly a security thing” but testing the problem of the limits.
He further adds that without testing and improving the limits of a blockchain you’ll never be able to scale to a larger protocol.
On NFTs
Amid the booming non-fungible token (NFT) market — which allows investors to track ownership of their art collectibles — FTX and FTX. US is set to launch an NFT platform. And commanding a bigger presence in the space.
Harrison says that in about a month’s time FTX will roll out an NFT infrastructure. “[And] we’re very close on it”, he adds.
So far, FTX and its US arm offer users to mint and list NFTs. They now want to give users the ability to mint NFTs through other trading platforms.
