“Crypto is becoming cultural, it’s becoming cool,” he said.
“It used to be that if you were investing in crypto, you were kind of weird,” added Sheffield.
A crypto wallet is now used for different purposes, he said. Before NFTs, wallets were used as a secure measure of storing digital assets. However, people now discover new music—becoming more of a “super app” that influences a consumer’s life, he explained.
Meme-based Coins’ Increasing Popularity
In addition to NFTs, meme tokens such as dogecoin and Shiba Inu are other crypto assets that exploded in popularity this year.
There has been “huge demand” for such tokens in Singapore, said Yusho Liu, co-founder of local crypto exchange Coinhako.
The exchange saw a “pretty large” number of queries on when it would list the Shiba Inu token, said Liu, who spoke on the same panel as Sheffield. He said Coinhako has no plans to list the token.
Kevin Lim, a director at Singapore’s state investor Temasek, said speculation has partly driven interest in the crypto economy because of an opportunity to make “meaningful money.”
