WEF 2022: NFT custody is ‘the missing piece’ for mainstream adoption, says Veritic CEO

Published at: May 25, 2022

On day four of the World Economic Forum 2022, there were presentations on nonfungible tokens (NFTs), with speakers sharing their takes on use cases and adoption.

At Blockchain Hub Davos, Veritic CEO Stephan Holzer and Seal Storage Technology chief operating officer Alex Altman spoke on the importance of NFTs, their role in society and how the community can attract the mainstream to use the technology.

In his lecture, Holzer argued that simplifying access to NFTs may push mainstream adoption forward. According to the Veritic CEO, minting in more secure environments and NFT custody are “a missing piece to mainstream adoption.” He explained:

“We want to enable the next billion, and this needs NFT custody. And I personally believe that NFTS can potentially be bigger than cryptocurrency itself.”

Holzer noted that providing first-time users with a more familiar interface and custody services where they do not need to set up their own wallets could be a “game changer” for the entire market.

In his talk, Alex Altman, chief operating officer of Seal Storage Technology, weighed in on NFT use cases. He gave various examples of how they can improve the current state of affairs in real estate and gaming. He said that:

“There’s absolutely no reason that a deed to a house couldn’t be a unique digital asset as long as that asset is created and stored in the correct way. Given the fact that an NFT is purely unique, that asset can also be transferred really easily.”

Altman also pointed out that many people spend hundreds of hours playing games and developing characters, yet the gameplay ends with the player just leaving the game as all the assets acquired “disappear into the ether.” Altman said that with NFTs, people can “develop that asset and create it into a real-world piece of data that you can move, transfer and monetize.”

In a panel discussion on equality, Nicola Mendelsohn, vice president of Meta, mentioned that there is a possibility the creator of Bitcoin (BTC), Satoshi Nakamoto, is a woman. Not dismissing the possibility, Cointelegraph editor-in-chief Kristina Lucrezia Cornèr shared her belief that Bitcoin’s creator is a group of people made up of both men and women rather than just a single person.

In an interview with Cointelegraph, Polkadot founder Gavin Wood underscored that Web3 has expanded beyond just crypto and decentralized finance. He explained that the term also refers to many new kinds of services that Web2 cannot provide.