Here's the Easiest Way to Cash In on the NFT Boom

Gabe Weis is a friend of mine; he's not a famous Silicon Valley CEO or venture capitalist... but he's still the key to a tremendous profit opportunity right now.

Gabe is actually a very talented, very successful painter - a contemporary artist who works on Cubist faces. This rising-star artist already has more than 67,000 followers on Instagram, where he often sells his paintings through direct messages.

I'm a fan - and a customer. In fact, in less than three years, my wife and I have made at least 500% on one of his works.

That's because Gabe is a very popular seller of Ethereum-based nonfungible tokens, or NFTs.

NFTs are upending the traditional art market, and we're starting to see them achieve auction prices that rival the most valuable oil-and-canvas masterpieces.

NFTs created a huge stir this past March, when, in its first-ever cryptocurrency-powered digital art auction, Christie's dropped the hammer on one particular nonfungible token at ETH38,474.82. In dollar terms, and accounting for the buyer's premium, that's $69.3 million - the third-most expensive piece ever sold by a living artist.

The NFT market has grown almost tenfold since 2018; nearly $340 million worth were sold in 2020, and, yes, given the Christie's auction and what's come since, 2021 should blow 2020's numbers out of the water.

My own extremely lucrative experience with NFTs has me convinced no investor should miss out on what's happening here.

The good news is, you don't have to become an art connoisseur - if you don't want to. I'm telling my subscribers about a "backdoor" play on the explosive NFT market and the wider crypto-sphere.

It's something you can buy and sell right from your account...

The NFT Is No Passing Craze - It's Here to Stay

My wife and I are passionate art collectors, so rest assured, our Gabe Weis original is just one piece in a very big collection. It seems like every inch of our home near Silicon Valley is covered with art. Before the pandemic, we'd visit more than 100 studios and galleries a year.

That's how we came across Gabe's work. We met him at his home, hit it off right away, and bought one of his works, a version of which is now a highly sought-after NFT.

And am I ever glad we bought that painting...

We haven't had it appraised lately, but based partly on Gabe's success with NFTs, we've seen the value of these paintings shoot through the roof. The piece is probably worth as much as $5,000 today, five times the $1,000 we paid for it.

It's functionally not all that different from that $69 million NFT sold back in March. The artist, Mike Winkelmann, also known as "Beeple," had created one image a day since 2007. He then created a digital collage of those 5,000 images called "Everydays - The First 5,000 Days." It's this collage, a digital image, that Christie's put up for auction.

Bidding opened at just $100; seems Christie's wasn't expecting much to come of it. It certainly wasn't expecting the work to hit history books as the most expensive digital art ever created.

Now, here's where it gets really interesting...

You can, if you like, do a simple Google image search for Beeple's collage and find it in seconds from any one of thousands of sites. You can even freely download a hi-res copy of the image to see what all the excitement's about - just be aware it's not everyone's cup of tea.

But the truth is, you'll be getting a copy that's worth, essentially, nothing. The art itself, the original image file designed, created, and published by the artist... well, that's been spoken for, and it sold for $69 million.

It helps to think of an NFT as the digital equivalent of, say, the paper hardcopy of your car title, or the deed to your house. Both are records of who owns a specific item.

For a title or deed, those items are cars, houses, motorcycles, RVs, plots of land, etc. But when it comes to NFTs, those items are in fact digital. They can prove ownership of a tweet, a video, a .JPG or other kind of image, and so on.

But when you get right to it, there's a lot of downside to paper; it's all too easy to lose, destroy, or alter it. Not only that, but given enough motive, time, and money, more or less any hardcopy record or tangible artwork can be forged or altered.

The right piece can, of course, go for millions, which gives thieves and forgers all the incentive they need.

Unfortunately, the bad guys do brisk business...

This Could Save the World Art Market

In 2014, the Swiss Fine Arts Expert Institute rocked the art world when it claimed at least half of the artwork circulating in global markets was bogus - and this was at a time when the worldwide art market was worth an estimated $45 billion.

In 2018, curators at the famed Etienne Terrus museum in southern France were horrified to discover 82 of the 140, or more than 58%, of the Terrus works in their museum were actually forgeries. That's no "victimless crime," either - according to The Guardian, livelihoods were lost, andthe news was "catastrophic" for the tourism-dependent regional economy.

Even apart from out-and-out crime, there are thorny ownership disputes, such as we've seen constantly in the seven decades since World War II.

So it's very easy to see why the art world has wholeheartedly, enthusiastically embraced NFTs. They make forgery mathematically impossible. An NFT is a piece of data stored and certified by the global network of computers we call the blockchain.

It's complicated, but every computer essentially keeps every other computer "honest," ensuring there's only ever one NFT of its kind; that's why they're impossible to alter, forge, or recreate.

In short, NFTs leverage the blockchain to become incorruptible proofs of ownership and authenticity.

Specifically, they use the Ethereum blockchain.

Now, Bitcoin grabs all the publicity wherever cryptocurrencies and blockchain are mentioned, but I think Ethereum deserves much more attention. It's simply a better blockchain.

See, Ethereum was designed for "smart contracts." These are essentially digital contracts with the terms and conditions built right in. The blockchain automatically verifies which parties agreed to the deal, of course, but it also automatically and securely verifies when the conditions of the deal have been met.

This allows for things like NFTs to operate on Ethereum. It's also the blockchain of choice for dozens of "altcoins," a few which I think boast extreme profit potential.

It goes almost without saying that I'm bullish on Ethereum in particular; I think every investor should own some. The Ethereum blockchain is not only better, as I said, but, at $2,764, Ether is far less expensive than Bitcoin, and it's having a similar "on-sale" moment right now. It's notched better than 1,000% gains over the past year.

Though, as I mentioned earlier, you don't have to be into NFTs to cash in on the explosive growth there.

There's a much easier "backdoor" way...

Here's a Crypto Profits "Twofer"

I'm talking about none other than PayPal Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ: PYPL).

The company is light-years ahead of its days handling only online payments for eBay Inc. (NASDAQ: EBAY), to become a mainstay in money transfers, mobile payments, and much more.

And just recently, PayPal launched its cryptocurrency platform with support for buying and selling four major cryptocurrencies, including Ethereum.

As a crypto platform, it's very easy to use - you can buy and sell at the push of a button. That said, PayPal isn't a true crypto exchange, so you don't get tools like stop losses and limit orders. You're trading deep functionality for ease of use, a tradeoff I think the majority of new crypto investors would be just fine with.

So, as a place to buy Ether, it ranks right up there. And the stock itself represents a world-class play on the world's second-largest cryptocurrency.

PayPal is cooking with rocket fuel these days, and I think the profits only get bigger from here. In its most recent quarter, PayPal's earnings were a blowout. It reported per-share earnings of $1.22, easily beating forecasts of $1.01. At the rate it's growing, PayPal is set to double its per-share earnings in just over 2.5 years, but the way I see it, growth should accelerate greatly from here.

"Acceleration" is the name of the game when it comes to cryptocurrencies. I'm bullish on the blockchain and crypto, and I have been ever since I first recommended Bitcoin back in 2013. But my friend Tom Gentile takes "bullish" to a whole new level. He's tracking dozens of small "altcoins" every week to let his subscribers know when he thinks there could be a chance to make money. These coins, often much smaller than Bitcoin and Ethereum, can sometimes see huge moves when major coins rise; 142% in 12 days, 373% in 14 days... even 1,900% higher in a little over 60 days. You can click here to learn how to get his alerts.

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Michael A. Robinson

About the Author

Browse Michael's articles | View Michael's research services

Michael A. Robinson is a 36-year Silicon Valley veteran and one of the top tech and biotech financial analysts working today. That's because, as a consultant, senior adviser, and board member for Silicon Valley venture capital firms, Michael enjoys privileged access to pioneering CEOs, scientists, and high-profile players. And he brings this entire world of Silicon Valley "insiders" right to you...

• He was one of five people involved in early meetings for the $160 billion "cloud" computing phenomenon.
• He was there as Lee Iacocca and Roger Smith, the CEOs of Chrysler and GM, led the robotics revolution that saved the U.S. automotive industry.
• As cyber-security was becoming a focus of national security, Michael was with Dave DeWalt, the CEO of McAfee, right before Intel acquired his company for $7.8 billion.

This all means the entire world is constantly seeking Michael's insight.

In addition to being a regular guest and panelist on CNBC and Fox Business, he is also a Pulitzer Prize-nominated writer and reporter. His first book Overdrawn: The Bailout of American Savings warned people about the coming financial collapse - years before the word "bailout" became a household word.

Silicon Valley defense publications vie for his analysis. He's worked for Defense Media Network and Signal Magazine, as well as The New York Times, American Enterprise, and The Wall Street Journal.

And even with decades of experience, Michael believes there has never been a moment in time quite like this.

Right now, medical breakthroughs that once took years to develop are moving at a record speed. And that means we are going to see highly lucrative biotech investment opportunities come in fast and furious.

To help you navigate the historic opportunity in biotech, Michael launched the Bio-Tech Profit Alliance.

His other publications include: Strategic Tech Investor, The Nova-X Report, Bio-Technology Profit Alliance and Nexus-9 Network.

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