OpenSea CMO sees tokenized Pokemon cards, Rolexes and tickets driving next NFT wave

OpenSea CMO Adam Hollander thinks tokenized Pokemon cards, Rolexes and tickets could drive the next NFT wave. My take: that is a much cleaner signal than another 2021 profile-picture rush. For crypto investors, the difference matters. A real-world asset NFT cycle would hit ETH, NFT liquidity, marketplace revenue, token speculation and user onboarding in a different way than the “digital casino” run that pushed NFT volume above $16 billion in 2022.

Hollander told The Block’s Gareth Jenkinson at Consensus Miami that “it makes nothing but sense” for collectible trading cards and similar assets to be tokenized and traded onchain. Fair enough. But this is not the usual “Bored Apes are back” argument. That’s only half the story people keep trying to tell. Hollander’s narrower point was that NFTs can still work as ownership records for digital and physical assets, even after profile-picture collections lost most of their heat.

This is more than a nostalgia pitch. Hollander named Pokemon cards and Rolex watches. He also pointed to digital tickets, gaming items and AI tools as possible demand sources. Those categories matter because ordinary buyers already understand them. A $20 Pokemon card priced in dollars feels very different from a tiny ETH-denominated number that looks like a rounding error. I’ll be honest: that UX problem did more damage last cycle than some crypto natives want to admit. Hollander said OpenSea wants to avoid that kind of user experience. Good.

For traders, the shift could move the upside. In 2021 and 2022, NFTs often traded like leveraged ETH sentiment. Risk appetite returned, floors jumped. Liquidity dried up, floors cracked. The $16 billion-plus 2022 figure is still the reference point. Why does this matter? Because if the next cycle runs on tokenized collectibles and tickets, ETH still matters as settlement infrastructure, but better signals may come from marketplace volume, wallet activity, fiat checkout adoption and whether buyers can use the product without staring at the chain.

The macro setup still matters because NFTs are risk assets. When traders expect easier financial conditions, money usually moves further out the risk curve: BTC first, then ETH. After that come smaller tokens, gaming assets, collectibles and whatever the current narrative happens to bless. Counter to the usual advice, that does not mean every NFT recovery is just an ETH beta trade. The next NFT wave is a liquidity test. Can tokenized Pokemon cards, Rolexes and tickets bring in buyers without the speculative NFT trade being carried by easy money?

Regulation is sitting under this story too, even if Hollander did not lead with it. OpenSea’s delayed SEA token launch is still unresolved, and Hollander said the OpenSea Foundation controls those decisions. He also said a token launched as “nothing more than a memecoin” would not deliver value. Traders should care about that line. A future SEA token needs utility and distribution rules. It also needs market structure that can survive the first claim-and-sell rush. We have seen this movie before.

OpenSea is also trying to become more than an NFT storefront. Hollander said the company wants users to manage crypto assets, NFTs and collectibles across multiple wallets and chains in one place. That takes aim at crypto’s fragmentation problem. If OpenSea can put wallets and chains behind one usable interface, then add tokenized physical collectibles and fiat payments, it starts to look less like a marketplace for JPEG-era collections and more like a crypto asset dashboard. Is that overreach? Maybe. But it is at least a coherent product direction.

AI adds another wrinkle. Hollander said recent advances could make it easier for people to create digital art, animation, games and other online assets. “It’s becoming easier and easier for virtually anybody to create amazing things,” he said. That may help supply. It does not create pricing power by itself. Yes, this slightly cuts against the bullish consumer story above, but bear with me. Traders should separate creator output from collector demand. More assets can mean more activity. It can also split attention and weaken floors.

The strongest part of Hollander’s argument is the consumer angle. He is not asking buyers to learn crypto slang before buying a collectible. He is saying OpenSea needs Apple Pay-style fiat payments and dollar pricing so users see the product first and the chain second. That feels obvious now, but it was not obvious enough in the last cycle. People had to think about gas, wallets, ETH decimals and floor prices. I think that was the tax nobody priced in. The next version may need to hide the machinery.

What this means

This suggests a possible move away from speculative NFT identity assets and toward tokenized ownership markets. For ETH and NFT-linked liquidity, the thing to watch is not only whether Bored Apes or CryptoPunks rebound. It is whether real-world collectibles, digital tickets and gaming items create repeat transactions. The trade is ETH infrastructure plus marketplace exposure. SEA token speculation probably stays capped until the OpenSea Foundation gives a real launch timetable. No timetable, no clean trade.

Watch OpenSea’s product updates after Consensus Miami, especially fiat payments and multi-wallet support. Cross-chain asset display matters too, as does any official SEA token message from the OpenSea Foundation. For markets, the practical benchmark is still 2022’s $16 billion-plus NFT volume. A real recovery needs volume that looks less like a casino spike and more like steady collectibles turnover: dollar pricing, ETH rails in the background and assets people already wanted before anyone wrapped them in crypto language.