FTX's meltdown was painful but necessary for the industry to grow up, bitcoin bull and MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor says

• MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor says FTX's downfall helped root out crypto's bad actors.

• Saylor called for more regulation in the space during an interview with CNBC last week.

• The bitcoin bull says crypto "needs clear guidelines from Congress" and "rules of the road from the SEC."

The cryptocurrency industry is enduring a crisis of confidence as a slew of industry giants like FTX face scandal-ridden collapse. Sam Bankman-Fried's crypto exchange may have wiped out over $8 billion of customer money, though MicroStrategy founder Michael Saylor says the meltdown has pushed the space forward in the long run.

The downfall of Alameda and FTX, Saylor says, shed light on bad actors in the trillion-dollar industry.

"The crypto meltdown was painful in the short term, but it's necessary over the long term for the industry to grow up," Saylor told CNBC on Friday.

Saylor says crypto has brought forth innovative ideas like borderless and inexpensive payment transfers, along with an immutable blockchain.

"This industry has some good ideas like digital currencies and assets moving at the speed of light that are unstoppable and a digital commodity that can't be debased," he said. "And it also has a lot of entrepreneurs that implemented those good ideas in an irresponsible fashion."

Crypto needs clear regulatory framework to hold companies to specific standards and protect customers.

"What [crypto] needs is adult supervision. It needs the Goldman Sachs' and the Morgan Stanley's and the BlackRock's to come in the industry," he said. "It needs clear guidelines from Congress. It needs clear rules of the road from the SEC."

Saylor is a long-time bitcoin bull, with his software company amassing a pile of 132,500 bitcoins since August 2020.

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