What’s an NFT? How do I buy one? And why would I want to?
What is an NFT?
NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token.
An NFT is a digital asset that represents real-world objects like art, photography, music, in-game items and videos. They are bought and sold online, frequently with cryptocurrency, and they are generally encoded with the same underlying software as many cryptos
NFTs are tokens that give proof of ownership to a digital asset
Why would you want an NFT?
There are a range of uses for NFTs and more being developed every day. Some even include commercial usage rights allowing owners of the NFT to use it for financial gain. Samsung recently announced they are making an NFT compatible TV, allowing owners to display their artworks as screen savers.
Other NFTs are linked to exclusive communities.
A Limited number of NFTs (like ours) come with a physical product redemption – in our case a physical print.
Limited edition collections are traded online like baseball cards, being released with varying levels of rarity – there is enough variety in the market to excite almost any collector.
What does that mean?
NFTs gave artists and creators an opportunity to sell their works in a digital format. In a world where digital art can now be displayed, shared and commercialised – creators of content needed a marketplace where they can protect their work from being stolen by minting them on the blockchain, and then to sell or share that work . That’s where the NFT marketplaces like opensea.io came in, acting like the ebay of digital art.
Why all the hype?
Whilst NFTs are fairly new to many people, they have been around since 2017
The total value of all NFT transactions worldwide jumped 21,350% to more than $17 billion in 2021, from $82.5 million in 2020
This growth was partly driven by celebrity collections from people like Snoop Dogg and Gary V as well as high profile investment in platforms like Opensea from many famous investors, including entrepreneur Mark Cuban, Reddit’s co-founder Alexis Ohanian, Pinterest’s co-founder and CEO Ben Silberman, Shopify’s CEO and founder Tobie Lütke, and many others.
Market growth has also been fueled as the result of marketplaces like Opensea becoming more user friendly
Step 1: Get a wallet and fund it
You need a digital wallet with funds to buy NFTs. On OpenSea, the currency you will use to buy is Ether (ETH). For this guide, we’ll use MetaMask, the most popular web wallet for NFTs.
If you don’t already have a wallet installed, go to metamask.io and download it as an extension for your web browser and connect it to OpenSea.
Step 2: Connect Metamask to Opensea
In order to do so, go to OpenSea and navigate to the top right bar and click on profile. You’ll be redirected to a new page prompting you to connect your wallet. Choose MetaMask.
Step 3: Browse the OpenSea NFT collections
Click to view the Gentoo Penguin Collection supporting Oceanites
Go to your OpenSea profile and click on “Explore.” There, you’ll see the thousands of NFT collections available.
On the top right bar, you can filter your search by clicking on Trending, Top, Art, Collectibles, Domain Names, Music, Photography, Sports, Trading Cards, Utility, and Virtual Worlds.
Step 4: Buy Now or Make an Offer
When you find something you like, you can buy it directly or make an offer. Keep in mind that some NFTs will have the option “Place Bid,” where you can make an offer to the owner to acquire the item
For buy now Hit “Buy now” to proceed to checkout. You’ll see the details of the NFT, like name, its respective collection, the subtotal, and the total. Click on Confirm Checkout.