TAMPA, Fla. — It’s everywhere you go these days.
Cryptocurrency. Be it Bitcoin, Ethereum or Dogecoin, is everywhere. And NFTs….also known as non-fungible tokens also are soaring in recognition and popularity.
The Bay area recently made history as a Gulfport home become the first in the nation sold as a non-fungible token (NFT) using cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
The selling price was $655,000.
On this episode of To The Point Already Podcast, Spectrum Bay News 9's Rick Elmhorst and Roy De Jesus talk all things crypto with technology expert Gabe Higgins, financial analyst Zachary Brown and Tampa Bay Business Journal technology reporter Lauren Coffey.
“This is all very early concepts,” said Gabe Higgins, co-founder of Tampa-based Blockspaces. “The execution of how NFTs are being utilized right now may not be how they look in a couple years from now. We are at the very nascent stages of how this is being developed and acclimated into different future users. But yeah that is (real estate) one use case.
“Real estate is looking to apply this type of technology for property ownership.”
Coffey added that wider acceptance of crypto currencies is happening and may be a key turning point in the future of the burgeoning blockchain technology – which is a digital database that stores information electronically.
Blockchains are best known today for cryptocurrency systems, such as Bitcoin, for maintaining a secure and decentralized record of transactions.
And Tampa Bay may be poised to be in the center of crypto’s future.
“Could we become the crypto capital of the world?” Coffey said. “Yeah we can. It’s a little bit crazy but we’ve had a lot of crypto people come down here and it’s not so isolated anymore.
“We have a lot of really cool start up (companies) here doing stuff like Pocket which is worth more than a billion dollars now. I think it’s not going to slow down anytime soon.”
ABOUT THE SHOW
Spectrum Bay News 9 anchor Rick Elmhorst sits down with the people that represent you, the people fighting for change and the people with fascinating stories to ask the hard questions.
