Getting into Crypto Art & NFT Art Investment: THE BARE BASICS
Cryptos and the blockchain world always get portrayed and talked about as these complicated and inaccessible things. In many ways they are complex, but they don’t have to be and, in many ways, more than ever they are much more accessible to so many people. NFTs are very much a part of the blockchain world, and this is an absolute bare basics guide to what NFTs are and how to get into collecting and investing in NFT Art. If you thought the real art market’s market cap was high, the digital art space is swiftly catching up. There are many opportunities for investment and here are a few things that’d be good to know to get started:
What are NFTs and Crypto Art?
Crypto Art was previously a term used to refer to the movement of people making art on the topic of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology. This could be anything from digital artworks to crypto-related merch. The term is now widely associated with the creating, owning, and trading of NFT Art pieces. What is an NFT? You must be asking.
NFT stands for ‘Non-Fungible Token’. NFTs are a particular type of cryptographic token that presents something ‘unique’ and they are not mutually interchangeable.
In other words, NFTs are tokens that exist on the blockchain that represent anything, really, anything! You are able to buy digital land on the blockchain. If that doesn’t make your mind wander… I don’t know what will. Hence the potential and the constant development in the space. In this article we are concerned with NFT art, so NFTs, in this case, are representative of art pieces and can be art pieces in themselves.
As NFT art pieces exist on the blockchain, the history, value, and ownership of them can be traced, and people are constantly evolving this exploding art market. There are platforms for people to interact with and create NFTs and NFT Art pieces. To add to all of this greatness, the barrier for entry to the NFT Art market is much lower than the traditional art market, and there are many opportunities to invest in the potential of art pieces, artists, and this space.
How do you access the NFT Art market?
To interact with the NFT space and engage with the NFT Art market you will need a way to access decentralized applications and the decentralized web. There are many ways to do this but probably the easiest way is to use Metamask. Metamask is a browser plugin that serves as an Ethereum wallet and it makes it really easy for people to access the decentralized web. Metamask essentially acts as your gateway and is in a sense your one ‘passport’ for engaging with different decentralized platforms. Your cryptocurrencies for interacting with decentralized apps will be on there, and NFTs that you own will be associated with your account. Once you have got your ‘passport’ to the decentralized web, you will be able to access NFT marketplaces like Rarible and OpenSea. There are many other marketplaces and platforms for NFT art; they are listed below.
How are NFTs valued and how do you invest in NFTs?
Once you have been able to access NFT Art marketplaces and platforms, you will probably be overwhelmed by the sheer amount of art and activity that is going on. It’s great, soak it all in. You could literally be spending days scrolling through all the beautiful art pieces out there. So how do you invest in art… isn’t the value of art subjective? Yes, but there are many things that cause humans to collectively associate value with something. This could be hype, scarcity, or general appeal, among other things. These factors that drive our prescribing of value still apply here; we just happen to be dealing with a different type of asset.
Firstly, you can do things like study and follow artists. Try looking at their engagement, how they are growing in the space, in popularity and what kind of art they are producing. When investing in other assets, you are often betting on the potential future value of the assets. For NFTs you could compare this to investing in the potential value of the art piece and the journey of the artist. Now those are some variables you can consider when evaluating NFT Art pieces. Other things to consider include the scarcity of a piece, the mint number, and the story/narrative behind the piece. There are many ways artists are adding value to their NFT pieces now, such as including unlockable content, as well as making and creating collections. You will probably never work the perfect formula for finding that hidden gem of an NFT Art piece because of course, the value of art is subjective. Hence, I recommend collecting NFT Art pieces that you like, find beautiful, and enjoy engaging with. While doing this, also considering the few variables above will put you on the right path to have an awesome collection of NFT Art pieces that you enjoy and could grow in value. A very interesting marketplace is Nifty Gateway.
Nifty Gateway is an NFT marketplace that holds drops of NFTs created by well-established and sought-after ‘real-life’ artists at relatively low prices for anyone to buy and bid on. This gives everyone a chance at a making value investment in a NFT Art piece given you are willing to drop a few of your hard-earned cryptos for these pieces. This brings me to budgeting. It is probably not advisable to throw all your money on NFT Art pieces. I’m not stopping you, but when buying NFTs you will want to consider the expected return you might like from a piece and other factors such as Ethereum gas fees for carrying out transactions. Like with any investment, one should expect that they might not make their money back. Hence, I suggest that the ‘collect what you like but consider a few things’ approach. The more you are a part of the community, the more you will understand how people are valuing NFT Art pieces, which is something I seek to explore more in future articles on NFT investing.
Engage with the community.
The number one advice someone could give concerning getting into NFT Art investing and collecting is to engage with the community. You need to engage with the market, interact with the market and be a part of it to really learn and develop your eye for what has value and why. Twitter is big for NFT Art but Instagram and Reddit as well. Follow people, collectors and creators, and immerse yourself in what people are sharing and talking about. The surface of the potential for this space is just being scratched, so it’s a good thing you are getting on this rocket ship now.
Happy Collecting, Happy Investing, Happy Creating.
https://app.rarible.com/sabaisquared/
https://www.instagram.com/sabaisquared/
https://twitter.com/sabaisquared
Useful links:
Rarible: https://app.rarible.com/
Super Rare: https://superrare.co/
Makersplace: https://makersplace.com/
Known Origin: https://knownorigin.io/
Async: https://async.art/
Opensea: https://opensea.io/
Niftygateway: https://niftygateway.com/
Mint Space: https://mintbase.io/
NFT Basics: https://nftbasics.com/
