Could NFTs Be Legitimate Profit Generators for Businesses?

Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are all the rage among large groups of retail investors right now. While these investments are inherently speculative, companies across all industries are increasingly recognizing the draw that NFTs could have to fuel growth in their respective customer bases. In this segment of Backstage Pass, recorded on Dec. 3, Fool contributors Toby Bordelon, Jose Najarro, and Rachel Warren discuss the NFT market and its potential role in the future of business.  

Toby Bordelon: What kind of NFTs do you own, Jose?

Jose Najarro: It's weird to say one of this project that I'm in. The weird thing is these NFTs, most of them just seem as digital collectibles, but they have some projects behind them. It's more like joining a membership to some extent and if you joined this membership, you get perks. One of the projects I bought a few NFTs is called Uni Unicorns. Some of the artists there are behind artists that worked with like some of the big gaming studios, like Take-Two Interactive, Ubisoft. Some of the artists that have drawn those worked for them.

Some of their advisors are advisors in some of the big gaming companies that I know and follow. I'm like, hey, if an advisor from that company is working here, maybe I should take a closer look at it. That's probably one of my favorites at the moment. There's a lot that have gone into that have been more like gone to zero. But again, it's just the overall learning experience from it.

Bordelon: Cool. Thank you.

Rachel Warren: Yeah. Something I found really interesting about this, going off what you were saying, Jose, was that this has turned into like a side hustle for a lot of people, like speaking of freelance work and starting your own business online.

I remember, I think it was the summer I was reading about how people were creating NFTs, and some people were making quite a hefty sum from the sale of their NFTs and it's turning into this whole other kinds of online business someone can start. I think that just speaks to a really interesting age of digitization that we're living in, where that can be someone's job where you're creating digital assets for a living.

Najarro: There's this trend I've seen online that people who maybe not might be tech savvy, but might have some form of artist creativity behind them, there's this person who starts drawing on your sneakers your NFT that you own, and they charge like $200, $300 per sneaker.

Warren: Oh my gosh. 

Najarro: So they're making good money drawing because people just want to show off their NFTs as much as possible. There's so much imagination that you can use to make some form of side hustle in this market.

Warren: Wow.

Bordelon: Fascinating yeah. I'm like you, Jose, I think crypto is definitely here to stay I don't think it is going anywhere. I think it has its very practical uses, especially you talked about like smart contracts, that sort of thing. You can see some obvious uses I think in real estate. It's going to replace the old school ledgers and registration systems we have with a blockchain type technology that can track orders or the parcels. I worry about a price crash to some of the popular volatile currencies.

I don't know, we'll see what happens, but I feel like some of these are just pure speculation that are going to end very poorly. But I don't think the content is going away on NFTs.

Personally, looking about the collectibles, the art aspect of this, I personally prefer physical art, but I could see myself going NFTs. I thought about it with NBA Top Shot for a while like, "Oh, it'd be cool. Let me get involved in that," and I haven't yet. But if I were going to do it I'd want it to be like legit art like something I really like, not just say an NFT of some random dude's tweet, I don't know why I would for that.

But you asked if it has value, but you could ask the same thing about any physical piece of art. Does that have value? To the person who created and bought it, sure. To anybody else, maybe, maybe not. Could be the same way with NFTs. It could be one of those collectible artistic things where almost like baseball cards. Is there a value? Sure. To everyone? No, but that's OK.

We'll see where it goes. It's kind of cool. It's interesting. I would love to be able to do a thing where you buy, say, an original painting and the artist might also give you an NFT of that painting. That will be an interesting thing for some people to get into. But it's a fascinating concept and one I want to keep following. I think we're probably going to have a crash at some point in all this just because there's speculation.

Even overheated speculation doesn't mean that there's not something legit underneath that. That will eventually, and you look at the dot-com era, a lot of Internet companies flamed out and burned in the first wave, and yet here we are. You could have staying power even if we do have a crash. Just keep that in mind people who are looking at investing in this.

Just because it flames out or it appears to flame out, it doesn't mean it's over. Don't get turned off if and when that happens. Richard got a comment. Richard O says he think some NFTs might have a similar value as Marvel comic characters bought and owned by Disney.

You created a digital asset and you own a new image or a storyline or something that maybe that asset that is possibly valuable to Disney, or Netflix, or Meta, Apple. A lot of possibility here. You could see this happening.

Interestingly, I saw something, guys. Sony and AMC are partnering to give out Spiderman NFTs I think something like 80,000 or so to people who pre-order tickets to the new movie that's coming out a couple of weeks. If you haven't gotten your ticket yet and you want to see what the NFT thing is about, maybe if you're going to see it any way, buy a ticket, get a free Spiderman NFT.

I don't know what the full details of that are, but give it a look and maybe you're going to see more promotions like that. It could be a cool way to provide other collectibles to fans of various things potentially.

You could see sports teams doing these things, giving these things out. You go to the arena, you get like a towel or a bobblehead now, maybe you get an NFT one day. Here is an NFT of our players. You could easily do that. You could easily see teams doing that. So definitely something to keep your eye on.