Kraken founder and former chief executive Jesse Powell says there’s one thing he could have never predicted about crypto assets.
In a new interview on The Breakdown crypto podcast, Powell says he never would have surmised that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) would bring about the mass adoption of digital assets.
“More people are coming into crypto than ever through stuff that I would not have predicted, like NFTs. I think we need to find more things like that which are sort of this gateway use case for people who ask ‘why would I need Ethereum? What am I gonna do with it?’”
Powell goes on to cite a few examples of how NFTs sparked mass adoption, such as social media giant Reddit releasing collectible digital avatars built on Ethereum (ETH), the second largest crypto asset by market cap.
“The Reddit collectible avatars have been a massive success and they’ve onboarded millions of people into crypto just through the avatar system. People want to trade and customize these avatars, which are also NFTs, so I’m excited about stuff like that.”
Powell, who recently resigned as CEO of crypto exchange Kraken, goes on to note that there are plenty of real-life use cases for NFTs that he feels will further grow the crypto industry as NFTs can help burgeon secondary markets.
“NFTs in general, I think there are a lot of real-world use cases for NFTs that are really tangible and practical. Ticket sales for concerts, for example, the secondary markets for those, NFTs can usually improve those, pretty easily. That could be another major gateway…
[If] Ticketmaster starts using NFTs for everything, or there’s a competitor to Ticketmaster starts using NFTs, there could be another onboarding event for us.”
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