Kraken CEO: "2022 will really be the year of NFTs"

Favourite collections include Doodles, RTFKT and LetsWalk

As the competition among crypto trading venues heats up, exchanges including Binance, FTX, and Coinbase have all launched or announced plans for their marketplaces for non-fungible tokens, which have reached $22 billion in global trading volume this year, according to DappRadar. 

Kraken is the latest to jump on the bandwagon. The exchange is working on an NFT marketplace that could launch as soon as early February, Powell said.

Like late-night show host Jimmy Fallon, NBA basketball player Stephen Curry, and billionaire Mark Cuban, Powell owns one of the 10,000 NFTs in the Bored Ape Yacht Club collection, which is also planning to launch its own play-to-earn game next year in collaboration with Animoca.

Besides BAYC, his favorite NFT collections include LetsWalk, a project by animator DeeKay Kwon; community-driven collectibles project Doodles; and the CLONE X project by NFT studio RTFKT, which was recently acquired by sportswear giant Nike. 

Powell sees NFTs becoming "a much bigger thing" in 2022 not simply because of the aesthetic values and prestige associated with owning certain NFTs but also due to their use cases such as provenance tracking, borrowing, and lending. For example, crypto lender Nexo recently partnered with hedge fund Three Arrows Capital to allow customers to borrow stablecoins and other digital currencies by using NFTs as collateral. 

"I think next year is really going to be the year of NFTs" Powell said. "If I'm thinking as an investor, what are the platforms and the coins that are going to benefit from that? I think it is some of these decentralized worlds."