Kevin O’Leary Of Shark Tank Says NFT Market Will Be ‘Absolutely Huge’, Names One Big Use-Case

Billionaire venture capitalist Kevin O'Leary says that the non-fungible token (NFT) market will explode on the back of clear utility and use cases.

In a new interview with Anthony Pompliano, O'Leary shouts out NFTs as one of the big sectors to watch in crypto, not necessarily for art and collectibles but hard, enterprise use cases. As a watch-lover and investor, he uses the industry as an example.

"I think the NFT market is going to be absolutely huge, and I'm going to be a participant in it. I'm thinking NFTs, not just on digital art. I'm thinking NFTs used to authenticate physical assets. The one I'm working on, because I'm a huge watch collector and I know all the world's largest collectors and the CEOs of all the watch companies, is authenticating secondary market watch trading."

Referring to a recent CNBC article outlining the $20 billion explosion in high-end horology during the pandemic, O'Leary notes how a huge problem in the industry is the hassle of sending watches across the world in order to be authenticated by experts.

"The hassle of doing that, the cost of doing it, moving it from the seller in Hong Kong to New York City in Bond, having John look at it, open it up, make sure it's real, close it, send it back to the seller so it's in his physical hands, then do the trade... I can avoid all that with a watch NFT! Once that watch was put on the market, [the watch authenticator] would do an NFT to it, approve it, certify it, and for the rest of that watch's life and every time it trades, you know it's real. If we have to pay back a royalty to Patek Phillipe or whoever the maker is or the designer of the dial, that's fine. You can do all of that with a smart contract. Should that be on Solana? Should that be on Ethereum? Should that be on a derivative of Ethereum?"

While O'leary's vision of NFTs serving real commercial use cases hasn't quite blossomed just yet, the digital art and collectibles scene has been one of the more parabolic sectors of the digital asset economy. NFT investors are at the point of dropping large sums of ETH on digital art they haven't even seen yet. Following the announcement of NFT artist Tyler Hobbs' new collection of 100 tokens, Hobbs' fans raised a total of 1,800 ETH for "Golden Tokens” that grant ownership rights to one of the artworks that will be minted during the event.

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