“If you are an artist and still don’t use NFT (Non-Fungible Token), you are potentially missing millions of dollars.” –Olawale Daniel
NFTs. You’ve most definitely heard of them before. Famous entrepreneurs and investors are bringing great amounts of attention to the blockchain frenzy that revolves around these NFTs.
Not only they, but artists, music creators, collectors, auctioneers, and various other industry leaders are looking to this particular smart contract technology as the future.
But, you might be wondering, what exactly is an NFT? I’ll quote the description I gave in the last post we wrote on NFTs back in March of this year (2021).
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)
A non-fungible token is basically a blockchain based token which is created to represent a unique, unduplicable item in the digital realm. Ownership of these tokens is ownership of the item which it represents.
They act sort of like a title for a vehicle, a receipt, or the deed to a house or a certificate of some sort: validating ownership. They can represent literally anything, as long as that thing is a singular item which can be claimed by an owner: a record set out by your favorite band, an exclusive piece of art, a concert ticket, reels to NBA games, a car, a house, a website domain, an coin… the list goes on.
The only limits to NFTs are other coins, tokens or currencies; the things that are highly traded and more of a liquid asset, as well as things which are just not able to be owned or claimed by any entity. NFTs are applied to real world assets as a smart contract stating ownership of whatever asset that may be. They can’t be traded like any other crypto, as they are all unique to themselves.
How to Buy and Sell NFTs
So how do I go about getting into this kind of thing? Maybe you’re an artist. Maybe an investor. Or maybe an art fanatic. Collector, musician… like we said- you name it. These should interest anyone who values and trades any particular sort of item.
If you’re even remotely familiar with blockchain or cryptocurrency, NFT transactions are well within your realm of understanding. Especially if you’ve ever played any sort of game offered on a decentralized platform. It’s as easy as trading your tokens on an exchange. Or, for the gamers, trading your land, cat, or whatever the money makers are in the game. Decentralized games are an excellent example of NFTs. Marketplaces work like auctions- bidding wars. Put out the number you desire to spend and it has a chance of being accepted.
Buying
If you’re just in the market to buy, there’s not too much to it if you’re already involved and familiar with crypto and blockchain. Besides a wallet holding crypto and the internet, few things are required. All it takes is finding the NFT platform of your choice, holding some of the required currency on an accepted wallet to buy, browsing through the options, and making a purchase through a transaction over the blockchain.
Selling
If you’re a creator/seller, it’s a similar story. Easy as pie if you’re familiar with blockchain. Once you’ve got a selected blockchain and have either purchased or minted NFTs, selling is a no brainer.
There’s just the extra steps in moving the NFT around to get it off or back on the market or to the right selling environment. Pretty much the same steps: Wallet with crypto and internet. NFT platform, wallet address to receive required currency, waiting for a bite and adjusting the price as needed. Boom. Your NFT is probably going to sell the way this market is exploding right now.
Where to Buy and Sell NFTs:
Pretty easy huh? Well where can I make these trades? Where can I get an NFT? Sell my NFTs? Safely and Securely? What’s the best for the buyers and the sellers? Are some better or worse?
There are tons of marketplaces out there, each blockchain specific, of course. More continue to pop up as Web 3 comes more and more to full fruition each day. This might make it rather daunting to step into the market, but there’s no need to fear. Let’s take a look.
Buyers
So many places to buy an NFT. Where do I start? Which ones are legit? Well, evaluating NFT markets goes hand in hand with evaluating the blockchain behind them. Which coins do you see as valuable?
Each Platform for NFT commerce is specific to certain Blockchains. What cryptos are you HODLing? These might be the projects you look at when searching the market.
Ethereum is the biggest network for NFTs, but others such as Polkadot, Tezos, Cosmos, Solana, Binance Smart Chain and more recently, Cardano, amongst numerous others, also offer NFT opportunities. All the NFT marketplaces run on a particular network, not limited to the list above.
Sellers:
If you’d like to sell, a good place to start would be in the buying market. Go check out the NFT markets as a consumer; See what platforms have which kinds of art or tradeable items. Most have all sorts, but some NFT types are more valued from community to community. So it’d be good to see where your style gets the most attention and valuation. Some market places might be better for Art, some for collectibles, some for music.
Knowing the underlying blockchain definitely helps. It’s good to go where you get the crypto you seek to trade in. Also a good idea to know how popular the environment is… For example, an NFT on an Ethereum based platform might get more attention than one on the BSC simply because, on average, there’s more volume.
Where Though?
Here we have a few, more popular marketplaces with a brief description as well as links to the platform.
OpenSea.io
OpenSea is an all around NFT auction house run on the Ethereum blockchain. They have everything on there as far as NFTs; They have art. Baseball cards. Video. Audio. You name it. The first and largest, according to their website. They have a 2.5% commission fee and option to mint.
Rarible
Rarible is a community for NFTs. Built on Ethereum and the first to use their own stablecoin RARI. Creators can submit their art and have the option to mint on the platform as well. With around 5 % commission, Rarible trades all sorts of valuables and seeks to become a DAO as a community.
Mintable
Mintable is another Ethereum run marketplace. Buyers and Sellers can trade NFTs of any kind. Mintable focuses the lens on minting- welcoming visitors of their website with the offer to do so on their homepage. This gives them a wide variety of tradeable items. Also a DAO, users govern the flow of the network. They charge between 2.5%-10% commission.
PancakeSwap
PanacakeSwap is a decentralized exchange (DEX) built on the Binance Smart Chain. You’ll need BNB and CAKE, their governance token to trade here. Pancake swap specializes in art and PancakeSwap collectibles- as of right now, only PancakeSwap collectibles can be traded on their platform, as they just made the market live over the last month. They take 2% commission which goes to coin burns to sustain the DEX. They have room to grow, but are rather sizely for just having native made NFTs.
NiftyGateway
NiftyGateway has their place as a centralized market of digital art. Artists can sign up and submit their collections to be “dropped” on the platform with 5% commission. There is a new drop every so often and certain collections are only available for a limited time. They announce when new drops are coming with new or popular collections. Users can either use crypto (ETH) or USD /fiat currency to trade.
Creating and Minting:
Creating and minting is almost as easy as buying and selling. Creation difficulty comes with whatever your subject is, but turning that creation into an NFT is what we call minting. Minting requires everything that buyers and sellers would need. But to mint you do need whatever you’d like to upload to the network; photos, images, audio files, videos.
There are various ways to mint an NFT, it all depends on where you choose to do it. For most, like OpenSea, it’s as easy as clicking the ‘create’ button.
NFT minting can be done by anyone with something to sell! These platforms definitely make it easy. If you do create, royalties can be offered on some of these platforms for secondary sales. Minting seems to be a user-friendly experience.
NFTs, The Future of Art? Or just a Fad?
NFTs are here. Smart Contract proof of purchase and ownership. These items cannot be duplicated. Digital art, digital representation of real world items. Some say insane, but it’s actually incredibly practical. Think about it. We already have certificates, proof of ownership, titles, deeds, receipts… etc. In the age of sustainability, it’s only realistic.
Those who criticize the “NFT Bubble” aren’t seeing the widespread application of NFTs. The fact that art is going digital and is booming in popularity and value is only appropriate with the way digitization is happening in our world today. NFTs apply to a lot more than digital images… Real world art is going to be 100% NFT sooner than we know.
Thanks!
Thanks for reading! Hope you have gleaned something from this. Leave us some feedback, and look for NFT resources coming to our Connections Page! Give us a share and a follow on social media, and keep coming back for more on crypto, blockchain, and various other free market things!
