Few predicted NFTs would suddenly become the talk of the town in 2021 when they were first introduced in 2014. Reports show that NFT trading volume was around $10 million in Q3 2021, a massive 704% increase from the previous quarter. This was just the start.
To many, NFTs add a visually appealing and creative element to the crypto world often perceived as excessively techy and complicated.
Afterimage, audio, and video NFTs too hold, with NFT shards on their way, crypto investors are scrambling to jump on the fast-moving NFT bandwagon in time.
If you wish to become an NFT investor, this article will explain the steps of how to buy an NFT and where to buy them, introducing you to the most popular marketplaces.
Where to Buy NFTs
There are different marketplaces to buy different types of NFTs and each levy a specific fee for transacting on their platform, so you should aim to choose a cost-effective platform for buying your NFTs.
OpenSea
OpenSea, established in 2017 by Alex Atallah and Devin Finzer, is the biggest marketplace to buy, sell, and trade different types of NFTs across marketplaces and Blockchains. The company is based in North America and has its headquarters in New York City.
The platform hosts around 30 million NFTs on Ethereum, Polygon, and Klaytn blockchains. Apart from providing a platform to trade in NFTs, Open Sea aims to provide an integrated marketplace where developers can build and launch their NFTs. It supports Ether and around 150 other crypto tokens.
So you can use the OpenSea marketplace for buying a range of NFTs such as art, game NFTs, sports and music NFTs, utility NFTs such as keys to own gaming collectibles or gaming DAOs, enter particular Discord communities, and so on.
Binance NFT
Binance is a crypto exchange as well as a popular NFT marketplace. It was established as a crypto exchange in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao and was based in China. Later, the company headquarters moved to the Cayman Islands.
People can buy, mint, and trade NFTs with the Binance NFT marketplace. It hosts some top NFT creators such as X-Metaverse, Big Time Studios, NFT_Pride, NFKings, and Seek Tiger. You can access different NFT collections such as Mafia Land NFTs, DinoX World Avatars, GiiiO role NFT, X-Metaverse Box, and Atlantis Metaverse Genesis NFT. Binance NFT also hosts features such as the mystery box feature from time to time where players get a chance to win rare and unique NFTs.
Aside from Gaming NFTs, the platform also offers NFTs from categories like Art, Sports, Entertainment, Collectibles, E-sports, and Premium NFTs.
Foundation
The Foundation marketplace brings creators and collectors together on a platform to build and trade NFTs. It was established in February 2021 and is owned by Kayvon Tehranian hailing from San Francisco, California. Through Foundation, collectors can mint our buy images, video, and 3D artwork. A creator can create an art NFT on Foundation only through an invitation received by another creator, unlike other NFT platforms.
Rarible
Rarible was founded by Moscow-based Alexei Falin and Alex Salnikov in 2019. It is headquartered in Delaware, United States. It hosts NFTs on Ethereum, Polygon, Tezos, and Flow blockchain and features a massive NFT collection ranging from art, photography, games, metaverse, music, domains, DeFi, Memes, Punks, NSFW, etc.
The software-giant Adobe partnered with Rarible in Dec 2021 to display content credentials of the listed NFTs to make it easy to protect and verify digital content.
SuperRare
This NFT marketplace was launched in 2018, where NFT lovers can collect and trade mainly art-oriented NFTs.
The platform introduced its token in 2021 when the artists and collectors in the community formed their DAO. Some of the prominent investors at SuperRare include Mark Cuban, Ashton Kutcher, and Samsung Next. The company is owned by John Crain, Johnathan Perkins, and Charles Crain and is based in the United States.
Project Specific Marketplaces
You can also buy specific NFT assets from their respective marketplaces. For example, NBA Top Shot is the marketplace to purchase official GIFs from the National Basketball Association. There is also an NFL All Day market for limited-edition NFL moments. Music lovers can visit the Musician Marketplace to buy NFTs of music compositions and platforms like Async Art, explicitly meant for programmable art.
There are dedicated marketplaces for particular NFT-based game items, such as Axie Marketplace for items used in the popular ‘Axie Infinity’ game. It also has its own token, and the users should have these tokens to buy things from the Axie Marketplace. Mintable is another platform for unique music, art, games, animation, and media collectibles.
SolSea, another marketplace on Solana, lets creators mint NFTs with embedded licenses and display the Rarity Rank of the NFTs listed.
Other NFT marketplaces include Nifty Gateway, Thetadrop, etc. NFTs on the Rarible and SuperRare marketplace is also available on OpenSea.
Let us now move on to the steps to buy an NFT.
How to Buy NFTs
- Buy Crypto Tokens from a CeFi or DeFi Exchange and Add Funds in the Crypto Wallet
First, you need to have the crypto tokens to possess your desired collectibles. You should buy the tokens supported in the NFT marketplace from where you wish to buy NFTs. Some marketplaces have their own tokens to transact. You can purchase these tokens from any DeFi exchange such as Coinbase, Binance, Gemini, etc.
Once purchased, you should send the tokens to your wallet, like the Metamask wallet, to be able to use them for the purchase. You can check here if you want to learn how to set up the metamask wallet. Remember to have sufficient units of the crypto token in your wallet to pay for the NFT and the Gas fees involved in the transaction; the Gas fee is the transaction charge for the computation effort involved in facilitating transactions on the Ethereum Blockchain. Gas fees vary according to the traffic on the network.
- Open the Marketplace
You can now open your chosen NFT marketplace and register on it. You will then scroll through the different types of NFTs offered. You can filter through the various collections offered to hunt for the NFT you wish to possess.
- Place Your Bid
You will find items under ‘Auction,’ where you can bid the price you wish to pay, or you can buy the item directly. NFT sellers auctioning items provide the Auction time, the previous selling price, and the cryptocurrency they are accepting from the buyers on the marketplace.
- Payment
Link your wallet to the marketplace using the ‘Connect Wallet’ button to proceed with the purchase. Once the transaction is successful, you will see the amount deducted and find the NFT stored in your wallet. You can also store your NFTs on offline hardware wallets such as Trezor or Ledger.
The NFT value is generally determined by markets, with floor prices naturally setting the bottom-end range. Other factors could be the uniqueness and the artist’s reputation.
Final Thoughts: Keep Your NFTs Safe!
This should be about everything that you need to know for you to be able to buy an NFT. One last word of advice: if you are an NFT enthusiast and wish to mint and trade NFTs, you should be careful of NFT scams that can make you lose your crypto funds and NFTs through phishing attacks on your crypto wallets.
Keep in mind NFTs and cryptocurrency is very new and they can be volatile– you should never invest more than you can afford to lose in a volatile market such as NFTs.
