- Billionaire investor Ray Dalio said he wants to buy and mint NFTs to experience the process.
- "I think I should produce one," he told podcaster Lex Fridman.
- Dalio said the world is an era in which different types of money will compete as the value of fiat currencies diminishes.
- Sign up here for our daily newsletter, 10 Things Before the Opening Bell.
Ray Dalio wants to get into the market for non-fungible tokens, the latest craze to take the digital art collections world by storm.
"I definitely want to buy NFTs to just experience that," Dalio told artificial-intelligence researcher Lex Fridman in a podcast released Saturday. "I think I should produce one," he said, agreeing to Fridman's suggestion that he should see what it's like.
NFTs are unique, irreplaceable, mostly digital items linked to works like art, real estate, or music that users buy and sell online. These are powered by blockchain technology, like bitcoin, to keep a digital record of ownership.
"This stuff is happening. This stuff is real," the founder and co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates, said. "But like all new, real things, some are going to go and some are going to… you know, it's like the internet in the year 2000."
"That's the beauty of a competitive system that'll evolve," he added. "Some things will be treasured and some things will be trashed."
In his discussion, Dalio said he thinks the world is in an era where different types of money will compete as the value of fiat currency depreciates due to excess printing. He indicated that bitcoin's evolution has changed his mind about cryptocurrencies.
"There will be a competition of monies, and bitcoin is part of that competition," he said. "But there'll be many monies, not just crypto monies. There'll be central bank crypto monies."
NFTs too can become a type of money that could eventually make people say "I'd rather own it than own bitcoin," he said.
NFT sales have had a mega year, raking in about $320 million in the past week alone. The total trading volume of NFTs for 2021 peaked at over $23 billion, up from $100 million 12 months previously, according to data from DappRadar.
Earlier this month, Dalio disclosed he owns ether as well as bitcoin and reiterated that cash is the "worst investment."