In this episode, Sunny Ray reconnects with longtime family friend Ahmad, a pharmacist and pharmacy owner from Victoria and Vancouver, to explore his growing fascination with NFTs. Ahmad describes discovering sports card investing during the pandemic, which led him to NBA Top Shot and later Ethereum based collectibles. He explains how NFTs let fans own official highlight moments, build community, and give creators direct royalties without middlemen. Midway through, Kay, a former hedge fund and brokerage professional who helped launch 3iQ's early multi crypto fund, unexpectedly joins the call and shares her own path from traditional asset management into Bitcoin and NFTs, including ideas for using NFTs to track artist engagement on physical works. Sunny pushes back, questioning whether NFTs solve any real problem compared to Bitcoin's censorship resistant, decentralized properties. The conversation becomes a friendly debate about scarcity, forkability, membership utility, and whether NFT enthusiasm is really driven by fear of missing out on early gains. Ahmad admits he keeps most of his portfolio in Bitcoin and treats NFTs as speculative play money.
A pharmacist turned NFT collector and a crypto fund co-founder debate whether digital collectibles rival Bitcoin's promise of freedom.
What first got you into NFTs?
I've always loved fantasy sports and sports card collecting. During the pandemic I got into sports card investing, then discovered NBA Top Shot, which let me own official game highlights without the friction of grading, shipping, or insurance that comes with physical cards. It combined my basketball knowledge with a new digital collectible market I could trade instantly worldwide.
If a jpeg can be screenshotted by anyone, how is owning the NFT actually different?
It's like having a photo of the Mona Lisa on your phone versus owning the original painting. The image looks the same, but only the actual creator touched and made the original. You have to accept some collectible market thinking, owning the authentic, cryptographically verified original carries more value than any copy people can spread around.
How did you go from traditional asset management into crypto and NFTs?
I spent years in hedge funds and private client asset management, but I lost confidence in fiat holding its value. By 2017 I found a Singapore based crypto fixed income company and helped bring the first multi crypto asset fund to Canada through 3iQ, back when it was just Fred Pye and me. That pulled me away from traditional asset management for good.
What's the actual utility beyond glorified gifs?
Wallets are being built so owning a specific NFT, say a Crypto Punk with certain traits, gets you into private events, dinners, or limited physical items. I see membership models like Soho House eventually living on chain, so if a club gets too popular you could sell your access to someone else instead of just holding a static membership.
Isn't Bitcoin's censorship resistant, decentralized money more important than something like NBA Top Shot?
I agree Bitcoin is the bigger opportunity long term and most of my portfolio is in it, but with NFTs I feel like I can still get in early and chase quicker multiples the way I couldn't with Bitcoin anymore. I know part of that is fear of missing out, but I treat it as play money while keeping the majority of my funds in Bitcoin.
What excites you most about NFTs from a creator's perspective?
The smart contract lets artists earn a royalty percentage every time their work resells, so they benefit directly from their own success without a middleman. I talked to a sculptor who stopped taking commissions because he couldn't track his audience engagement, and NFTs with something like a geo located QR code could solve exactly that problem for physical art.
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