NFTs: Real Vision CEO Raoul Pal on the Tokenization of Everything

Recently, former Goldman Sachs executive Raoul Pal explained why he is bullish on the NFT sector.

Prior to founding macro economic and investment strategy research service Global Macro Investor (GMI) in 2005, Pal co-managed the GLG Global Macro Fund in London for global asset management firm GLG Partners (which is now called “Man GLG”). Before that, Pal worked at Goldman Sachs, where he co-managed the European hedge fund sales business in Equities and Equity Derivatives. Currently, he is the CEO of finance and business video channel Real Vision, which he co-founded in 2014.

In the April 2020 issue of the GMI newsletter, Pal explained why he believes that Bitcoin, which he called “the future”, could one day have a $10 trillion valuation. In that issue, Pal said that the idea of a $10 trillion valuation for Bitcoin is not so crazy:

“After all, it isn’t just a currency or even a store of value. It is an entire trusted, verified, secure financial and accounting system of digital value that can never be created outside of the cryptographic algorithm… It is nothing short of the future of our entire medium of exchange system, and of money itself and the platform on which it operates.“

Yesterday (5 November 2022), Pal took to Twitter to talk about the huge potential of NFTs, where he said:

“Right now, people think of NFT as art or community. Both are amazing use cases for NFT’s. We will see all cultural assets digitised and tokenised… While the tokenisation of culture is almost infinite and has only just started, most people miss the even bigger picture… ALL contracts will get tokenised as NFT’s as they more efficient, cheaper, faster and more secure…

“ALL: ID, tickets, reservations (hotels, airlines, trains, restaurants etc), all insurance contracts, internet permissions, hotel keys, car documents, real estate, certifications… …advertising, supply chain contracts, inventory management, business deals, driving licenses, medical records, employment history, references, etc etc… but it gets even bigger…

“The entire financial industry is based around contracts at a truly VAST scale – too big for the old City of London “My Word is My Bond” system to work and a two party, audited ledger/database… There are somewhere between $650trn and $4 QUADRILLION of derivatives, $250trn of equities, same in bonds, etc. These are all non-fungible contracts of sorts (some are large and some are 1 of 1’s like a special OTC option)…

“All asset management and funds will be tokenised too. It is much faster, accessible, transparent and more efficient… AND the ‘smart’ element of NFT’s mean that enforcement or dispute resolution is automatic, cheaper and faster, as is ‘storage or ownership’…

“No one can get their heads around this. Everyones anchors of a linear path of what is happening today but miss the BIG picture, which is truly exponential in nature. Some of it will happen fast and some over time. It also has other benefits… It frees up velocity of money through less trapped capital, settlement, dispute, enforcement, etc. It makes the system infinitely less capital intensive. It is also transparent. And it can create liquid(ish) secondary markets of all of it…creating capital efficiency…

“And you thought it was just about the BIG concept of ownership of digital assets in a digital age… My frens… you are missing the REALLY BIG picture. EVERYTHING will be tokenised. NFT’s, fungible tokens and blockchains (and who knows what else is to come) will run it all.“