Billionaire Mark Cuban on why NFTs led him to be a crypto evangelist

For billionaire investor Mark Cuban, there was one defining second that led him to go all in on cryptocurrency.

“I all the time paid consideration to bitcoin, the pricing, the tokens and the [crypto]currencies,” Cuban instructed Miami Mayor Francis Suarez at The North American Bitcoin Conference on Monday. “However what actually bought me into it was, a few 12 months in the past, after I minted my first NFT.”

NFTs, or nonfungible tokens, are distinctive digital belongings. Minting an NFT is the method of turning an asset right into a token that’s represented on the blockchain. It permits NFT house owners to each show that they personal the asset and be capable of promote it if they need.

For Cuban, the chance to additionally earn royalties on secondary gross sales of his NFTs was enormous.

“The truth that you can take a digital file — audio, video, image, no matter — and never solely mint it to promote it, but in addition connect royalties to it, I’m like, ‘How are you going to do this?’ As a result of you possibly can’t do this with something bodily,” the “Shark Tank” investor and Dallas Mavericks proprietor stated.

After digging a bit deeper, Cuban discovered about sensible contracts, that are collections of code that perform a set of directions on the blockchain. Good contracts are essential for NFTs, in addition to different crypto initiatives, akin to decentralized finance, or DeFi, purposes. “To me, that’s very disruptive,” he stated.

“NFTs, whereas they’re scorching proper now and everyone is speaking about them, they’re actually extra only a proof of idea for what you are able to do with sensible contracts and decentralization,” Cuban instructed Suarez.

Now, Cuban considers himself a crypto “evangelist,” he stated. He’s extraordinarily bullish on the area and has a cryptocurrency portfolio of assorted digital cash, NFTs and investments in lots of blockchain corporations.

Disclosure: CNBC owns the unique off-network cable rights to “Shark Tank.”

Join now: Get smarter about your cash and profession with our weekly publication

Don’t miss: Mark Cuban says 80% of his investments that aren’t on ‘Shark Tank’ are crypto-related: Right here’s ‘the place I look to speculate’