The former hedge fund manager says that top-tier NFTs essentially serve as status symbols and should see significant upside during crypto boom cycles. Real Vision CEO and co-founder Raoul Pal believes nonfungible tokens (NFTs) will act similar to “high-end property” in the traditional economy, outperforming Ether during crypto market boom cycles. In an hour-long YouTube video published on Feb. 20, the former JPMorgan executive offered a run-down of what he felt most bullish about when it came to NFTs, including key use cases for the asset class, its underlying tech and its potential performance relative to Ether.
Pal said just as “high-end property” often outperforms the market when the “economy recovers,” the same is likely to occur with certain NFTs during crypto boom cycles. “So I can take my ETH and put it into a JPEG, an NFT. But why? Well, because much like high-end property and think of a [Crypto]Punk as a high-end property in London or New York or Hong Kong or wherever it is, when the economy starts booming and people have more money, they tend to buy expensive high-end property.” “And it tends to outperform the rest of the market. And I think the same thing will happen in ETH economy,” he added.
He highlighted that major collections such as CryptoPunks and the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) have become status symbols in the crypto community, much like owning a luxury house, car, or item from a famous brand that offers access to exclusive clubs or what he dubbed as “mini network-states.” He saidthat NFTs serve as a “way of owning property in the ETH economy,” adding: “Humans are ridiculous and we love to socially signal stuff.”
Looking back, the former hedge fund manager said NFTs started to draw his attention in 2022 as he started to “understand the power of what they are and what they can do,” such as being able to transfer “value” via blockchains and automated smart contracts. He also pointed to NFTs’ uses in the resolution of contracts, noting that blockchain-based ledgers can offer verifiable transparency on what has been agreed between people, while smart contracts can essentially do away with unnecessary third parties.
“Now what's interesting about the smart contract element of an NFT is the fact that it kind of allows for the settlement mechanism to be automated in code and resolves without the need for a third party so you don't need the courts, the lawyers, the notaries and the accountants.”
Pal stated that since he got into NFTs, he’s allocated roughly 10% of his ETH holdings into “premium NFTs” such as CryptoPunks and BAYC NFT. He suggested that such collections potentially offer more upside potential than downside risk, as they have managed to sustain a decent level of value during the bear market. He also believes the price of ETH is likely to increase moving forward.
“When you look at the price of CryptoPunks and Bored Apes, they’ve remained incredibly stable in ETH terms. Yes, they had a blow-off top and they came back and they’ve traded about 65 ETH forever. And that’s interesting to me because they didn’t fall much further. They had a sharp spike in June in the big crypto collapse. But other than that, they’ve just rallied back and stayed at 65 ETH. So whatever ETH does, they’re just mirroring it,” he said.
