NFT, the new insurance challenge

NFTs, an acronym for "Non Fungible Tokens", are one of the most interesting phenomena to have exploded in the digital world over the past year, in terms of players, applications and media attention.

Data collected and shared by NonFungible.com indicates that thousands of NFTs are bought and sold every day, with up to 50,000 sales per week. This number is steadily increasing, leading to the growth in value of NFTs: sales now range between $10 million and $20 million per week.

According to the Financial Times and Chainalysis, there are about 360,000 NFT owners holding about 2.7 million "Non Fungible Tokens", but only 9% of the total are responsible for about 80% of the market value.

This massive increase in NFTs is igniting the curiosity of many companies in different industries looking for opportunities.

It is precisely the field of Blockchain - a set of technologies in which the ledger is structured as a chain of blocks containing transactions, and in which consensus is distributed across all nodes of the network - that is evolving ever faster, from cryptocurrencies to NFTs. According to the Blockchain and Distributed Ledger Observatory, in Italy, investments by companies amount to €28 million in 2021, stable compared to €23 million in 2020, and €30 million in 2019. The most active sectors are finance and insurance, with 50% of investments, followed by the public administration (15%), which is growing strongly also thanks to the development of the Italian Blockchain Service Infrastructure, agri-food (stable at 11%) and utilities (10%).​

In this context, the question arises whether an NTF can be insurable, even in countries with a poor insurance culture. There are companies around the world that have already thought about what could soon become a massive business. In fact, Insurtech companies in Hong Kong have announced the launch of the first NFT insurance, a policy that covers theft and loss of the NFT.

It is expected that the demand for insurance coverage for NFT assets will grow more and more, with a huge market potential, in a unique and innovative technology ecosystem that requires specific vertical skills.

We are facing completely new perspectives for insurance companies, which are called to study possible developments for safe, accessible, and easily understandable NFT insurance products. Products designed for the new generations, familiar with the languages of the digital world and with new technologies, attentive and curious about such radical innovations.​