The former manager of a hedge fund says that top-tier non-fungible tokens are mostly used as status symbols and should see big gains during crypto booms.Raoul Pal, CEO and co-founder of Real Vision, thinks that nonfungible tokens (NFTs) will behave like “high-end property” in the traditional economy and do better than Ether during booms in the crypto market.In an hour-long YouTube video posted on February 20, the former JPMorgan executive talked about what he was most optimistic about when it came to NFTs. He talked about key use cases for the asset class, its underlying technology, and how it might do compared to Ether.Boom! Here you go…My deep dive thesis and understanding on NFT's, what they mean, where they are going and why they are important and more.. It's all Ive got right now but will evolve!I think it's a really important piece. Appreciate any feedback!https://t.co/JMOdBnmrxh — Raoul Pal (@RaoulGMI) February 20, 2023Pal said that during crypto booms, certain NFTs are likely to do better than the market, just like “high-end property” does when the “economy recovers.”“So I can take my ETH and put it into a JPEG, an NFT. But why? Well, because much like high-end property and think of a [Crypto]Punk as a high-end property in London or New York or Hong Kong or wherever it is, when the economy starts booming and people have more money, they tend to buy expensive high-end property.” “And it tends to outperform the rest of the market. And I think the same thing will happen in ETH economy,” he added.Looking back, the former manager of a hedge fund said that NFTs started to catch his attention in 2022, when he started to “understand the power of what they are and what they can do,” such as being able to transfer “value” through blockchains and automated smart contracts.He also talked about how NFTs can be used to resolve contracts. He said that blockchain-based ledgers can make it easy to see what people have agreed to, and smart contracts can get rid of third parties that aren’t needed.“Now what’s interesting about the smart contract element of an NFT is the fact that it kind of allows for the settlement mechanism to be automated in code and resolves without the need for a third party so you don’t need the courts, the lawyers, the notaries and the accountants.”Pal said that since he started investing in NFTs, he has put about 10% of his ETH into “premium NFTs” like CryptoPunks and BAYC NFT.He said that such collections might have more upside potential than downside risk, since they were still worth a decent amount during the bear market. He also thinks that the price of ETH is likely to go up in the future.“When you look at the price of CryptoPunks and Bored Apes, they’ve remained incredibly stable in ETH terms. Yes, they had a blow-off top and they came back and they’ve traded about 65 ETH forever. And that’s interesting to me because they didn’t fall much further. They had a sharp spike in June in the big crypto collapse. But other than that, they’ve just rallied back and stayed at 65 ETH. So whatever ETH does, they’re just mirroring it,” he said.Content Source: cointelegraph.comCover Image Source: barrons.com