Sam Bankman-Fried Says FTX-Backed Stablecoin 'Very Likely' In 'Not-Too-Distant Future'

Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of the Bahamian-based cryptocurrency exchange FTX, teased that the possibility of the company creating its own native stablecoin is "very likely" and it could be coming in the "not-so-distant future."

SBF's company currently offers margin trading that enables customers to use various kinds of U.S. dollar stablecoins as collateral. This includes USD coin (USDC), Binance USD (BUSD), trueUSD (TUSD), Pax dollar (USDP) and HUSD.

"I think you'll probably be hearing something from us on that in the not-too-distant future," the crypto billionaire said when asked about FTX creating a stablecoin. Bankman-Fried told The Big Whale in the interview that "it is very likely" his company will create a stablecoin, a crypto asset with value tied to that of another asset.

Major crypto assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum are volatile, but a stablecoin usually pegs its price to a fiat currency. Among the world's most popular stablecoins these days include Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC, which are both pegged to the U.S. dollar. And, of course, the algorithmic stablecoin developed by Terraform Labs, the TerraUSD (UST) that crashed in May and wiped out $60 billion in investment.

SBF noted that while FTX has the knowledge on how to make its native stablecoin, he underlined that it is the kind of project that the company would like to do as a partnership.

"We've held off on doing it because, I think to some extent, we think that cooperating on that can be really powerful and a lot of that ends with us trying to find the partners we'd be really excited to work with there," the crypto executive noted.

Bankman-Fried is an advocate for regulatory oversight of the cryptocurrency industry, especially of stablecoins. He recently talked about it at an event hosted by the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

"Right now, the regulatory oversight of [stablecoins] is extremely unclear, it's extremely messy and there are a lot of cooks hovering around the kitchen, but there's no head chef," Bankman-Fried noted. He added that when considering guidelines for the industry, regulators should begin by "putting one foot in front of the other."