THIS IS NOT INVESTMENT ADVICE–I AM NOT RECOMMENDING YOU START BUYING NFTs. I’M SHARING MY EXPERIENCE AND LEARNING IN PUBLIC LIKE I HAVE IN THE PAST.
Like many, I’ve been sitting on the sideline watching the NFT market gain in popularity. I’ve been eyeing any NFT by Jack Butcher but they quickly go outside of my budget but I’m determined to own of his…one day!!
A friend of mine let me know about a drop yesterday from the Nice Drips project and after looking at the artwork, I decided it was time to get off the sideline and this was going to be where I’d make my first purchase. I quickly did some research on the project, although I was ready to move off my friend’s recommendation. As I read about Nice Drips, I liked the style of the NFTs, the project’s vision appealed to me, and I thought Roman, Leo, and Silas would like them. I was sold.
Back in 2017, before the run up in bitcoin thank you very much, I started buying BTC, ETH, and LTC to learn firsthand how to navigate the space; I prefer to learn through experience, rather than reading a bunch of blogs and white papers and waiting to fully understand before jumping in. I shared my experience here on the blog and wanted to do the same thing as I purchased my first NFTs–I don’t count the few NBA Top Shots that I bought with the boys. While they are technically NFTs, the process of purchasing them is very simple and I was more interested in the NFTs being purchased with actual cryptoassets because it would involve more steps.
Right now, the NFT market is saturated with projects that look like the Nice Drips–with the massive success of CryptoPunks and Bored Apes. I did not purchase these with the expectation they become the next project that begins selling for $100,000s and if they never appreciate, I’m perfectly ok with it. This was more of an exercise and I ended up with a couple of pieces I think are pretty cool.
The process of purchasing the Nice Drips was relatively easy but it did involve a few steps.
In order to avoid spending my invested ETH, I bought enough ETH in my Coinbase account to cover the purchases–I don’t plan on spending my invested cryptoassets. Once the trades settled, I sent my ETH from Coinbase to my Metamask wallet. If you’re new to NFTs, you’ll most likely need to set up a wallet with Metamask because most NFT marketplaces use it to facilitate transactions. It’s an easy process and there are plenty of guides available to help you get it all set up–a simple Google search will teach you everything you need to know.
With my Metamask wallet funded, I went to Opensea, which is an NFT marketplace to look for my Nice Drips since I missed the drop they did earlier in the day. Purchasing was simple. When I found ones I like in my price range, I just clicked buy now, connected my Metamask wallet to Opensea, confirmed the purchase, and that was it.
Just like that, I had become the proud owner of these:
My first experience in the NFT marketplace was smooth.
I don’t know how deep into NFTs I’ll get, but I doubt this is the only purchase I make–I plan on owning one from Jack Butcher after all.
I believe NFTs, digital art, and the growing crypto-marketplace is not going anywhere and will only become more widely accepted and adopted as it gets easier to transact. It’s easy to dismiss the space–there’s not a physical product, someone can just screenshot the image, and countless other reasons often cited but what’s being overlooked is the generation coming into a great wealth transfer, entering the workforce and higher earning years, and beginning to control more of the world’s wealth grew up in a digital world–and the generations behind them only know a digital world. Understanding how to navigate the crypto space is going to be more and more important, even if you don’t plan on collecting NFTs. It’s going to be like my grandparents going from balancing checkbooks to online banking–some of their generation kept up with technology and benefited, while others did not and struggle with simple transactions today.
I’ll keep you up to date as my NFT journey continues.
Disclaimer: Nothing on this blog should be considered advice, or recommendations. If you have questions pertaining to your individual situation you should consult your financial advisor. For all of the disclaimers, please see my disclaimers page.
