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What The NFT

Buying NFTs

Learn about how to purchase NFTs.

Getting ready to purchase an NFT

Ok, you have decided to buy an NFT. Now what? Depending on what NFT you want to purchase, and the blockchain that it is going to be listed on, you will need to buy some cryptocurrency. 

In this example, let’s say that your NFT is on the Ethereum Blockchain. Your NFT is most likely going to require a purchase in the currency ETH. (For Solana, it would be SOL and Tezos would be XTZ, and other blockchains will have their own native currency).

To obtain cryptocurrency with fiat currency (currency used in the real world), you will need what is known as an on-ramp (just a fancy way of saying a tool or service to get real world money into the cryptocurrency markets). There are two main ways of doing this including:

  • Using a Centralized Exchange. These are companies you may have heard of including Binance, Coinbase, Koinly, Gemini, Crypto.com, Kraken, eToro and a raft of others depending on where you live. If using a centralized exchange, you will need to provide your personal information to allow you to trade cryptocurrencies using their services. Having said that, centralized exchanges are the most common on-ramps to cryptocurrency. From here, your cryptocurrency will need to be sent to a non-custodial wallet of your choosing (popular options include Metamask and Coinbase Wallet, but there are others), where you will be ready to purchase an NFT.
  • Using payment gateways and including services like Moonpay, Wyre, Ramp Network, Transak for example. Each week, even more services are coming to market, increasing the offerings available and making cryptocurrency more accessible to all. These services allow people to skip the centralized exchanges and purchase cryptocurrency using a variety of payment methods where the cryptocurrency purchased is directly deposited into a cryptocurrency wallet of your choosing. This saves you the hassle of having to transfer cryptocurrency from a centralized exchange which holds your funds to a non-custodial wallet. 

Whichever way you go about purchasing cryptocurrency, as long as you have it ready in a non-custodial (cryptocurrency) wallet, you will be ready to take the next steps in your NFT purchasing journey.

So you have purchased cryptocurrency, and for this example, let us assume that it is in the form of ETH in your centralized exchange (CEX) account.

To transfer your ETH from your CEX, you will need to have a non-custodial wallet to send this to. Most users have a Metamask wallet. If you do not, you will need to set one up. Once this has been set up, you are ready to receive ETH from your CEX account. 

In your CEX account, find your ETH wallet and select the option often called “SEND.” Under this option, you will be asked for key information. This will include:

  • Token (or cryptocurrency) you want to send. In this case, it would be ETH.
  • Amount you want to send. You will need to select how much you want to transfer. When transferring, think about the costs associated with gas for both what you are sending and what gas costs may be when you spend your ETH. This can be hard to estimate, but it is always handy to have more than the bare minimum.
  • Wallet Address. This address is what you can find in your Metamask extension or application. When you open your Metamask wallet, the wallet address can be seen below your account name. It will start with “0x.” Make sure to copy this address carefully across to the wallet address field in your CEX send page.

o Note, there will likely be warnings about making sure you are sending to an address that is capable of receiving ERC20 tokens and that your wallet address is correct. These warnings are important for if your wallet address is not 100% accurate, your funds will be lost forever. There is unfortunately no retrieving them.

o A fee estimate will also be provided for the amount of gas you will pay for the transaction. Timing transactions with low gas periods will mean you pay fewer fees for the transfer.

Once you have input the above information and re-confirmed that the destination wallet is correct, hit SEND. Once the transaction has been confirmed on the blockchain, your ETH will be ready for you in your Metamask wallet.

Where to Purchase an NFT

When you have your wallet loaded up with cryptocurrency for a NFT purchase, there are a few ways of purchasing one. One way is through minting, which is the “creation” of an NFT on the blockchain, and another is by purchasing existing NFTs on a secondary market.

Each marketplace has a part to play in the overall ecosystem with niche buyers and sellers. Some are more suited to artists and collectors of art and others are targeted at a broader demographic. The most commonly used Ethereum marketplaces used to purchase and sell NFTs include:

Opensea
(
https://opensea.io/)
This marketplace is the biggest and currently most active marketplace for buying and selling NFTs. It supports NFTs on the Ethereum Network (mainnet and Polygon side chain) as well as Solana. It includes all types of collections from PFPs, to 1/1 art, photography, music, etc. Opensea takes a 2.5% fee for each sale made on the platform.

LooksRare
(
https://looksrare.org/)
A competitor to Opensea which launched toward the end of 2021. Users can earn LOOKS tokens for buying and selling using LooksRare, and the service fee is 2.0%.

Rarible
(
https://rarible.com/)
A lesser-known marketplace that has a similar offering as Opensea and LooksRare, and takes a 2.5% fee on every purchase and sale on the platform.

Nifty Gateway (https://niftygateway.com/marketplace)
A marketplace launched in April 2022. Nifty Gateway will aim to take on the larger marketplaces for market share and allows for easy onboarding of users to NFTs by accepting fiat currency payments for users in addition to cryptocurrency.

Foundation
(
https://foundation.app/)
A marketplace for 1/1 art of various mediums (digital, photographic, fine art pieces). Sales are by auction, starting after a minimum bid is placed.

SuperRare
(
https://superrare.com/)
A digital art NFT marketplace, often tailored to showcase fine art and photography. Prices of art on this platform are generally higher than others.

OpenSea is a leading Non-Fungible token (NFT) marketplace where you can buy and sell your assets. To get started, connect your crypto wallet like Metamask to OpenSea. To do this, you can go to the top right corner of the page and click the wallet icon. A prompt will pop-up where you can choose which wallet to connect. Once you’ve done that, your account is now live!

After connecting your wallet, OpenSea will bring your profile page where you can view the NFTs you’ve collected or favorited. You can customize your profile with a profile picture and banner, as well as change your username since the default account will be “Unnamed” until you edit it. 

Once you’re set, you can find an NFT you’d like to purchase in the marketplace. Review all the details of the NFT before purchasing as there can be specific properties that are more valuable. When ready, you can click the “Buy Now” button and will be prompted by OpenSea to review your purchase details. Click “Checkout” to open a prompt inside your wallet that will show final fees. Review the costs and check the NFT price if it is right and if fees are acceptable before clicking “Confirm.”

Once the transaction has been completely confirmed, you’re now a proud owner of an NFT!

To view your newly purchased NFT, return to your profile then select “In Wallet” located at the left side of the page. If it doesn’t immediately show up, it may be slightly delayed, so check back again in a few minutes.

LooksRare brands itself as a community-first NFT marketplace. LooksRare is unique to the other marketplaces listed on this site as it allows its users to earn rewards by buying or selling NFTs. LOOKS is the marketplace native cryptocurrency. All users are allowed to earn LOOKS by participating in the marketplace. These tokens can then be actively or passively staked to earn additional rewards.

There are three ways to purchase an NFT from LooksRare :

Make a Collection Offer: 

This is a unique feature that allows you to make the same offer on every item in the collection. If one person accepts your offer then your offer on all other items in the collection will be removed.

Make an Offer or Buy Now:

When you choose “buy now” you are purchasing the NFT for the listed price. When you choose to “offer” you are choosing to offer a different price than the one listed in hopes that the seller will accept. 

LooksRare has a two step process for purchasing 

Step 1: You will be taken to metamask wallet to grant permission to LooksRare to access and spend your eth. 

Tips: the “Edit Permissions” feature allows you to control how much eth Looksrare has the ability to spend. While your purchase might be 0.069 in total (NFT price +gas) metamask by default will give permission to spend significantly higher than that price. The default is usually to ensure that you have enough wiggle room for gas fees that typically fluctuate every 15-30 seconds. 

Step 2 : After hitting confirm in your wallet, you will be redirected back to LooksRare. Here is where you will confirm and finalize your purchase. 

Rarible is a multichain NFT marketplace. In other words, you can buy, mint, and sell NFTs on multiple blockchains such as Etherum, Tezos, and Flow! RARI can be earned by actively using the Rarible platform through buying and selling. 

How to Buy on Rarible?

First, connect your metamask wallet on your browser to the rarible platform by clicking the “connect” button. Then when prompted to, accept Rarible’sTerms of Services and then you’re all set to start purchasing your NFTs.

Like other NFT marketplaces, you can buy an NFT immediately for the listed price or you can place a bid for a different price.

When placing a bid your eth will be converted to WETH (wrapped Ether) and after confirming , your bid will be placed. 

Nifty Gateway works in a unique way when compared to other NFT marketplaces. It does not operate like OpenSea and similar secondary marketplaces, so let’s take that visual out immediately. 

One of the key differences is that Nifty Gateway is, what they call, a ‘custodial platform’. Basically, this means that the NFTs on their platform are stored in a secured wallet, ‘powered by Gemini’s state-of-the-art custody technology’, meaning you don’t actually have to use the blockchain when you trade.

Putting this another way, they are a ‘centralised’ NFT marketplace, unlike decentralised marketplaces, like the previously mentioned OpenSea. This ultimately means that their marketplace is controlled by a central authority. This is a fantastic attribute as it allows collectors to engage in the marketplace without ruthless gas fees, while security is presumably far better.

What’s more, is that if you do lose access to your account (which we are all not so secretly petrified of) you don’t have to search through rubbish tips to look for lost seed phrases in old, thrown-out notebooks. The team can actually help you retrieve access to their platform and your NFT’s.

Nifty Gateway also works directly with projects, artists, and brands to create digital art collections exclusive to the platform. Their goal is very clear, “We will not rest until 1 billion people are collecting NFTs.”

The Nifty Gateway team takes a lot of care in deciding which NFT’s will be accepted onto the platform. As it states on their website, “Artists must pass an application process and interview before being allowed to mint and issue NFTs. This ensures that all artwork collections are of high quality and helps to uphold the platform’s premium reputation.” This is a far more secure way to trade NFT’s than on other secondary marketplaces that allow anyone to list just about anything for sale, including copies of legitimate projects.

Nifty Gateway releases NFTs through ‘drops’, which are only available for a limited amount of time. These drops are either a ‘curated drop’ or a ‘verified drop’. A ‘curated drop’ is one that is sold directly by the curator, while the ‘verified drop’ NFT’s are not curated by Nifty Gateway. The team essentially verifies the NFT collection, and it must meet their legal and basic smart contract standards. Again, another win for security when investing in NFTs.

They also have a digital newsletter that gives readers updates on the upcoming NFT drops, so look out for this. Traders can also pre-register for certain, more popular drops ahead of time to ensure they can collect.

Foundation is an NFT marketplace that specializes in 1/1 art.  It requires an invitation for an artist to mint their pieces, however, anyone can purchase NFTs through auction or immediate purchase.  

In order to purchase:

  1. Click the three lines in the upper right corner.
  2. Scroll down to the black bar (Connect Wallet). Select MetaMask or WalletConnect. Sign in and accept the connection, then sign the signature request to connect your wallet to Foundation.
  3. Place your bid or buy now, check the gas and review the contract, then submit. 

You will be able to see the NFTs you own on Foundation within your profile, which is found by clicking on the small circle in the top right with your profile photo.  You can also see them within your wallet.

Ready to learn more?

Learn about Minting NFTs

Want to be the first owner of an NFT? You’ll need to learn about minting!

Learn Now
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