Once you figure out what NFTs are and how to buy them you must make sure you know what you are buying.
- if its a well known figure then look for the “verified” symbol beside the NFT
- make sure your wallet is secure and you know how to protect your money online
- make sure you check how much you are buying. the amount might sound small as a part of an Ethereum but it could be thousands of dollars
Most of the NFT (non fungible tokens) that you see going up on “projects” have something to do with cartoonish characters, or graphics images or avatars to use in VR worlds like Second Life and Decentraland etc.
So if you aren’t a young person or a gamer or a computer graphics specialist, then its time to immerse yourself in that culture for at least a few weeks and get a taste of what is hot and why.
Warren Buffet resisted buying Internet stocks for the first several years because he said that he never invested in something that he didn’t understand.
That is great advice…for the most part.
Many of us are in such a panic to catch the next big thing (FOMO is fear of missing out) that we are buying the first ridiculous cartoon image we see since other ones just like it sold for $10,000 …or at least thats what you heard…somewhere.
Most of this buying things for ridiculous prices really gained steam around 15 years ago with the sales of name brand running shoes like Nike and specialty TV shirts and skateboard products from companies like Supreme.
Back then the word “drop” came into the culture and when word got out that the latest running shoe or “kicks” were coming to the stores, shoppers would circle around the block by the hundreds and in the thousands to make sure they got their special edition running shoe or shirt.
Yes, alot of this had to do with the skateboard and the snowboard movement or the alternative movement back in the early 2000.
So the word “drop” is being used to this day with NFTs and company’s are talking about the launch of their latest NFT with pre sales and so much promotion that it would make Andy Warhohl have a heart attack!
Gamers are a HUGE part of the upcoming metaverse including virtual reality and AR. (see our other website Toys2WorkMETA.com)
For almost 20 years fans of the online virtual world called Second Life would meet nightly and create avatars and buy virtal real estate and virtual clothing and virtual just about everything.
So in November Facebook made this announcement that they were getting into VR and AR and online worlds and made everyone think that they were the first ones to do it.
But Second life had been floundering for years anyhow so now everyone wants to try out Second life and the handful of other big ones.
The story with Second Life was that when it first came out 20 or so years ago, millions of people signed up to see what it was and how to use it.
Vast numbers of people never made a second visit because they found it hard to move their characters around the virtual space, or they didn’t see enough reason to go back or were bored.
Now with the new VR worlds, the experts say that many people will be able to get the best effect by wearing headsets.
However many are now saying that there has always been the problem with dizziness with headsets and for whatever reason people didn’t feel too good if they wore them for too long.
So the new ones are definately much better.
But as I was saying before you invest in NFTs that will sell in a virtual world, get to understand what you are buying.
Gamers and graphics designers are a HUGE part of all this NFT movement.
So ask younger people about the games they play and go buy some older games at a thrift store and start playing them.
The big game for the last 5 years was called Fortnite.
The 15 year old car driving game where you get to run people over in an ambulance and punch strangers in the face in an ultrarealistic setting is called Grand Theft Auto.
Kids have liked Minecraft for years.
There are card like games called Warcraft the gathering and of course the real old school game that was around before the internet called D & D or dungeons and dragons…and of course other OG war games like Risk, Diplomacy etc.
So try hard not to get suckered into buying some ridiculous looking hand drawn stick man character for your $500 only to find out that there was no community behind it…no liquidity or market cap or any of the traditional signs that said you had a good company or “project” backing it all up.
Now the process of buying an NFT is fairly straightforward but not super easy and it can be nerve wracking because you will be putting your wallet on the line and hopefully you are secure.
Most people seem to buy and sell NFTs these days on a site called OpenSea and you would pay using Ethereum.
So you need to go to your exchange where you have your crypto and add some Ethereum to your wallet and then tie your wallet into OpenSea and then look for some NFT that you want to bid on or buy outright.
Now if you are older than 30 then you will have a culture shock when you see hundreds and thousands of bizarre looking green and purple dogs and cat cartoon images and more.
If you’re lucky enough to be on the site with a teenage friend or relative then you’ll be amazed to see how super excited they get when they see purple haired poorly drawn cartoon dogs and cats with pink fluffy hats on.
You may not be as excited.
But some of these kids are spending $4,000 while in their rooms while mom and pop are upstairs and the kid is making $50,000 in a week.
So you need to know whats going on.
But you’ll see these dozens of pictures of frogs wearing yellow hats and purple lips and you’ll actually see these dumb features listed with precision.
It’ll say something like 4,000 purple frogs and 2,000 frogs wearing a hat and 25 with a beard.
Apparently the more rare the image is …no matter how dumb the image looks, it may be worth more money.
Again, if you are looking at these pages with a young person you may be totally confounded why they are giggling and getting all excited to not just see these yellow haired amphibians or dogs but that they’re totally prepared to pay $3,000 for one!
Who knew?
Now when you are trying to buy some hot NFT you need to know how about gas fees as you get into whats called a gas fee war.
When a hot NFT is about to be released or dropped there will be a high demand and you need to make sure you have enough gas fees so that your bid will take precedence over the other potential buyers.
So you can use a site like BlockNative to adjust your gas priority fees up or down so you may have a better chance at buying the item being dropped.
(under construction Dec 19, 2021)