The cryptocurrency industry is one that has really turned a corner over the past couple of years. While there have naturally been those who have been supportive of the industry since day one, there were many who were on the fence about supporting crypto due to the industry’s anonymous nature, connections to money laundering and terrorist financing activities, and lack of proper regulations. Nevertheless, cryptocurrencies are quickly becoming a vital part of our daily lives and economical as well as financial infrastructure, which has resulted in many of the aforementioned individuals and institutions being forced to look at crypto with some renewed perspective.
As such, Visa had decided to support crypto earlier on in 2021, and its head of the company’s cryptocurrency department, Cuy Sheffield, recently talked about the crypto industry’s future along with the importance of NFTs in this day and age.
‘This is simply the beginning’
Visa’s head of cryptocurrency had mentioned in an interview which was recently conducted with Forbes that the company has officially purchased CryptoPunk 7610, which is worth about $150,000. This is the very first time that Visa has bought an NFT, and it speaks volumes about just how popular and undeniable non-fungible tokens have become. Cuy believes that we are only at the start of what could be a new era of digitalization and e-commerce.
In related news, Anchorage Digital had chosen to be the deal’s official custodian as well as becoming one of the very first banks to be involved in a custody deal that involved NFTs.
The future of NFTs
Cuy had talked about how he believes that non-fungible tokens are becoming increasingly important and what the role of these NFTs could be going forward. To that end, Visa will try to better understand the significance of NFTs via a partnership with the previously mentioned Anchorage Bank. As per the words of the head of crypto at Visa, this alliance will hopefully assist the company in knowing more about NFTs which can only help clients who wish to get involved in this space.
Visa shall be buying more NFTs in the future as it looks to enter the virtual art industry, and the company believes that there will come a time very soon when cryptocurrency addresses will be deemed to be just as important (if not more so) than mailing addresses. Cuy had additionally stated that Visa wants to do its part to help out struggling artists, developers, and various merchants through the interactions with non-fungible token commerce.