In an interview with Decrypt, the FTX boss said Avalanche, which is the 12th largest by market capitalization, has done something few others have done, which is scale.
"They're one of the only chains that has a real plausible path forward here in scaling to the level you would need to get to if you wanted industrial-scale usage," he said to Decrypt.
Avalanche total value of $20 billion pales in comparison to ethereum's whopping $375 billion, according to CoinMarketCap data. But, a recent note from Bank of America pointed out that the blockchain's "proof of history" mechanism allows for low transaction fees, ease of use, and scalability, relative to others like ethereum which has become known for its high gas fees.
As for avalanche, Bankman-Fried said, "it is a real chain; it's a cool chain, and I think that there's a world in which it gets absolutely huge."
Currently, avalanche's native AVAX cryptocurrency is ranked No. 12 with an approximate $20 billion market capitalization and a six-fold increase in the last year.
Avalanche's token, along with solana, cardano and polkadot, have been dubbed ethereum killers because their rival blockchains also offer smart-contract capabilities, in which two parties can execute a transaction automatically, with no intermediary, when certain criteria are met. This capability has been key to the booming market for non-fungible tokens.
To Decrypt, Bankman-Fried added that bitcoin, the founding cryptocurrency and largest by market value, is "going to remain at the center of the crypto ecosystem."
But its blockchain may not be how bitcoins regularly move around, given that so-called wrappers — which allow simpler transfers of tokens like bitcoin — are likely to "keep growing over time," he said.