Following the auction of digital artist Mike Winkelmann’s NFT artwork, artist name Beeple, at traditional auction house Christie’s, which eventually sold for over $69 million in March, NFTs or non-fungible tokens are like an ownership model that has attracted thousands upon thousands of emerging artists.
With numerous choices of platforms and tools than the traditional art market, it is easier to display artwork in virtual galleries to millions of internet users, while at the same time selling art pieces directly to the collector and with payments in cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies such as dollars and euros.
An NFT or non-fungible token is a new type of digital asset or crypto asset that represents ownership of a digital work of art. The ownership is recorded on blockchain technology – a digital ledger similar to the networks that underpin cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Can I Buy NFT?
Anyone can sign up and create accounts on NFT marketplaces to create, buy, collect, sell, or trade NFT.
The NFT tokens you buy on NFT marketplaces will be listed in your profile and you can withdraw them to your digital wallet.
Theoretically, any digital file can be minted as an NFT – music, image, video, digital painting, digital drawing, crypto punks, short films, virtual real estate, game items such as weapons, avatars, and armor, ENS domain names, virtual farms, tweets, and text documents – but most of the NFTs and collectors’ excitement is centered on digital art, digital collectibles, sports collectibles, trading cards, and video games like The Sandbox and Decentraland where users build and rule alternative worlds, virtual worlds or “metaverses.”
Where Can I Buy NFT Digital Art?
You can buy NFT digital art from sites such as OpenSea, SuperRare, Foundation, Nifty Gateway, and Rarible.
How Do I Get NFT Art?
The first thing to do is to choose an NFT marketplace, find out the digital wallet, payment method, and payment tokens that the site supports. After that process, simply create an account on a digital wallet, fill it with the currency your site of choice accepts or supports, and connect your wallet to the Site.
Metamask is the default Ethereum wallet for most NFT marketplaces and blockchain applications.
In OpenSea, for example, you can use +150 payment tokens, including fiat currencies such as the US Dollar and Euro. OpenSea also supports a wide range of digital wallets including Metamask, Trust Wallet, and Coinbase Wallet.
In NBA Top Shot, for example, you can buy digital collectibles and trading cards of the highlights and moments of America’s greatest basketball league in the form of NFT packages with a credit card or debit card.
Most NFTs are created or minted and stored based on smart contracts from the Ethereum blockchain, so on the top NFT platforms, the purchase is done with Ether (ETH), the native currency of the Ethereum network. But you can convert ETH into fiat currencies like US dollars or euros on cryptocurrency exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, Kraken, and Gemini.
If you decide to buy an NFT, you will receive a token, with a unique identifier or ID that contains proof of ownership, and some information such as the author, transaction record, provenance, authenticity, and a link to download the file, usually from the decentralized IPFS (Interplanetary File System) server.
If you decide to resell your NFT artwork, you can transfer it to a different NFT marketplace, connecting only your wallet, but if both markets are based on the same blockchain. After the sale, you will probably pay a royalty fee to the original artist of the work, depending on the percentage the artist has chosen.
What is the Best Place to Buy NFT?
If you are looking for a good place to buy NFTs, here are the NFT marketplaces with the highest number of artists, users, collectors, hosted digital artworks, and the highest sales volume.
01. Nifty Gateway
Nifty Gateway is a centralized marketplace that allows users to purchase limited edition and exclusive digital artwork using a credit or debit card. NFTs are known as Nifties, NFT releases and sales are done in “drops” that take place every three weeks.
Here you can start your own NFT collection from artists, musicians, and celebrities like Steve Aoki, Grimes, and Beeple.
Category: Digital art
02. OpenSea
OpenSea is also known as the first and largest provider of digital assets including art, music, sports, collectibles, game items, alternative worlds such as Metaversos, and other digital assets of the ERC-721 and ERC-1155 standard.
OpenSea is a decentralized marketplace that offers crypto asset trading via an Ethereum blockchain smart contract. With over 34 million hosted digital products, the marketplace allows you to buy, sell and trade collectible crypto, with a crypto wallet loaded with Ether (ETH), USD Coin (USDC), Dai (DAI), or choose from 150 other supported payment tokens, including fiat currencies.
You can buy fixed-price NFTs directly from art creators or bid on NFTs or non-fungible tokens in auctions.
Categories: Digital art, Image, Photography, Music, Games, Sports, Ens Domain Names, And Virtual Worlds.
03. SuperRare
SuperRare is a peer-to-peer (P2) marketplace that focuses exclusively on buying and selling single-edition digital artwork, i.e. the platform curates art pieces from 1/1 edition artists and brands. The platform has features such as art pages, a calendar of upcoming exhibitions and an editorial page, sale prices, and scheduled auctions including a testimonial page from artists who give to the site. Ether (ETH) is the default cryptocurrency for all transactions (minting, buying, selling, and transferring assets from one address to another).
Category: Digital art
04. Foundation
Foundation is a platform that became popular when it hosted for sale on NFT the works such as, the viral internet meme Nyan Cat, The New York Times newspaper’s column in image format, musical works by Eminem and The Weeknd, and Edward Snowden, a former employee of the USA National Security Agency (NSA).
Foundation also curated works from art creators on the homepage, where bidding on auctions can be done for 24 hours. The platform is powered by the smart contracts of the Ethereum network, so users can use the MetaMask wallet and buy Ether (ETH) before creating an account and minting NFTs or buying, selling, collecting, or trading artwork.
Category: Digital artworks
05. Rarible
Rarible is a very popular marketplace for NFTs, where users can mint, buy and sell NFTs ranging from GIFs to Metaverse. Rarible is also known as the first NFT marketplace to launch a governance token, known as RARI. RARI tokens are distributed to the most active buyers and sellers and allow them to vote on updates to the platform and participate in future decisions.
Categories: Digital art, Photography, Punks, Music, Games, DeFi, Metaverse, Memes
06. MakersPlace
MakersPlace is a marketplace that functions as a digital art gallery of creator collections and profiles, it allows users to discover and collect unique digital works. Here you can discover and collect short films, moonscape images, motion graphics, and reimagined statues and mythical gods. Sales of the artworks are done through digital auctions and fixed prices, and you can buy a piece of artwork using the digital currency ETH or a credit card.
Categories: Digital art, Virtual Reality, Video, Motion Animation, Short Film
07. NFT Showroom
NFT Showroom is a unique edition crypto art marketplace built on the Hive blockchain. NFT Showroom is open to all and has an easy-to-use interface, and hosts all styles of art from elite artists and emerging artists.
Category: Art
08. Mintable
Mintable is a marketplace that makes buying and selling NFTs as easy as buying and selling goods on eBay. Mintable is powered by the Ethereum and Zilliqa protocols, and MetaMask is the default wallet for all transactions. Art creators or graphic designers can create “no gas” NFTs, this is completely free. Collectors can buy the listed digital items or products directly or bid on auctions, and winners are notified or informed by email.
Categories: Art, Photography, Image, Videos, Games
09. NBA Top Shot
NBA Top Shot is a platform that allows fans of America’s premier basketball league to purchase, collect and trade digital “moments” in the form of limited edition packages, where prices range from $9 to $499. The “moments” in the form of packages include video highlights, player statistics, and scores. Fans can show off their collections, follow their favorite teams, and trade or exchange assets protected by DapperLabs’ Flow blockchain company.
Category: Sports Trading Cards, Collectibles
10. Zora
Zora works as a decentralized auction house based on the Ethereum protocols of the ERC-721 standard. Anyone can find and collect items such as images, GIFs, music, video, and text NFTs are for sale through Ethereum wallets such as MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, and WalletConnect.
Category: Art, Text, Image, Music
11. Zeptagram
Zeptagram allows musicians to sell digital downloads of their work as NFTs and also sell part of the ownership rights to fans, collectors, and investors. Zeptagram is powered by WAX and Telos protocols, which allows musicians and their investors to continuously receive royalties from secondary sales. The team behind the project has developed its own cryptocurrency, Zeptacoin, intended to be used for royalty payments, trading digital downloads, and music rights on the platform.
Category: Music, Art, Games, Photography, Video
12. Valuables
Valuables is an online marketplace to buy and sell tweets in the form of NFT. Twitter users can auction off their tweets and payments are made in Ether (ETH). The sales of tweets are so simple because you only need to enter the URL of your tweet or your user ID in the search bar of the site, and buyers can bid starting at $1.
Valuables became popular when Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey auctioned off his first-ever tweet, and consequently Twitter’s first tweet for $2.9 million.
Category: Tweets
Find more about NFTs: https://weplaycollectibles.com/