If you’re reading this, you’re probably wondering, “Why is there an article on NFTs in a fashion magazine?”
Fashion, art, culture and currency are all intimately interconnected and the future is knocking on our door louder than ever.
If you haven’t heard of NFT’s, you will. What are they? Simply put the Future now.
WHAT IS AN NFT?
NFT stands for Non-fungible token. If you’re still confused, don’t worry I got you.
If you Google “fungible,” you’ll see it’s definition as: “(Of goods contracted for without an individual specimen being specified) able to replace or be replaced by another identical item; mutually interchangeable.”
Take for example Bitcoin or Ethereum. You can give me one Bitcoin, and I can give you one Bitcoin in exchange and it would be identical. There’s no difference between them.
An NFT is NON-fungible. So basically you can’t exchange it or replicate it to make and identical one.
NFTs are smart contracts that live on the block chain, usually ERC-721 tokens. So think of this smart contract as a bucket with a unique serial number. It’s the only bucket in the world that will ever have that serial number. So you decide to create a piece of digital art and put it in that bucket. In essence, there will only ever be one of those buckets for your unique piece of art. If someone else tries to copy you, saves your image and puts it in a bucket, they can never copy the bucket serial number, so anyone reading the serial number will know it’s not your original piece of art.
So that’s super simplified, but keep in mind that bucket can hold anything you put into it.
Right now, it’s mainly used to hold art … but you’ll eventually be able to hold your driver’s license, social security card, medical records, house deed, car titles and more in their own unique buckets with their own unique serial numbers.
No one will ever be able to impersonate you because that unique number in that unique bucket will always belong to you until you trade it.
Ok, enough about buckets!
SO WHY WOULD YOU CARE ABOUT NFTs?
Because the future is coming, and you are missing out on the largest wealth redistribution, maybe in all of history.
Buying and trading art can become pricey, expensive. You can lose it all and at the same time you are also given the space and the community that could give you the opportunity of a lifetime.
Here’s an example: July 1st, you could have minted a Cool Cat NFT for .02 ETH or around $50 at the time. Today, the least expensive Cool Cat you can purchase on the secondary market as of the time of this article is 9.8 ETH or $28,738.50.
Now keep in mind, THIS IS NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE!
All I’m saying is wake up and smell the roses. Don’t let opportunity pass you by!
YOU CAN CREATE YOUR OWN NFTs TOO!
I won’t go into this side of NFTs in this article, because I’ll have to explain what a wallet is and it might be a much longer reading session for you than you anticipated. But just check out https://opensea.io/ and click Create on the top right … you’ll see it’s actually fairly simple and straight forward.
No like seriously. Beyond easy. Just make sure you create something someone would want to buy. Don’t throw a picture of your cat into one and expected to make a million dollars over night.
Or maybe do… who knows… someone might buy it. Cats are freaking cute.
SO WHAT’S THE MARKET LIKE?
Well most of the market is actually on one platform right now: OpenSea.io BUT there are other sites you can also trade the same NFTs.
Here’s some more:
- https://superrare.com/
- https://foundation.app/
- https://mintable.app/
- https://knownorigin.io/
- https://rarible.com/
- https://makersplace.com/
- https://niftygateway.com/
And there’s more, as well as there will be more that are created. But right now, those are some of the biggest names.
The market potential is actually staggering, in my opinion. So as of this article, in September opensea.io had almost $3 BILLION in sales volume, over 1.5 million NFTs sold, and over 260,000 active users.
The volume, per user is massive. Think of Opens as the bay of NFTs but right now only a fraction of the users. For reference, in the second quarter of 2021, eBay had approximately 159 million active buyers worldwide.
So right now there’s only .001% of the users active on Opens versus eBay. If you think you’re late in the game, think again. You’re at the beginning stages.
Imagine when the internet was created, you’re still within the first 3 months.
SO THAT BRINGS ME TO “HOW DO YOU WANT TO INVEST YOUR TIME IN NFTs?”
That all depends on you. Honestly, ask yourself and don’t get into anything without doing your own research and ALOT of it! There are alot of dung projects out there and alot of projects will go down the drain sooner or later without a great Team, Community, Mission and Values behind it. (I’ll do a write on what to look for in NFTs and what I look for).
Are you an artist?
Awesome! I can’t wait to see your work! Your interest in NFTs as an artist could be to improve your financial security by selling NFTs. Why would you want to sell your art as an NFT? Well here’s the exciting part…
Royalties!!!!
Let’s say I put an image of my dog into an NFT and sell it for $50. Not much right? But let’s say I had put a 5% royalty on that image and the initial buyer turns around and sells it for 10 ETH, well the seller made a ton of money AND you make 5% of the 10 ETH sale (0.5 ETH or roughly $1471.48)! That’s not bad for no extra work AND here’s another kicker… that happens for LIFE. So as long as your image keeps exchanging hands, you’re making royalties!
I’m excited, I think you might be too by now.
Are you into collecting?
I’m with you. My comic collection is larger than I can carry and NFTs have brought more easy and an incredibly much faster ability to sell them when I need or want to. No need to post images on eBay, write descriptions, package anything and head to the post office. Everything is done from the comfort of my office desk.
You can collect all day long, sell all day long and engage with a great deal of amazing people in the NFT space.
Side tip: Get yourself on Twitter AND Discord.
There’s a HUGE NFT and Crypto community on Twitter and Discord and you’ll learn something new everyday, find projects to look at everyday and find great people everyday.
Join a community, interact, contribute, show your support and you’ll get more out of it than just cute jpegs.
SO WHAT SHOULD YOU BE DIGGING DEEPER INTO?
Well, with any area of society that there is great financial potential, there’s also great loss potential. First and foremost, learn about crypto. Here are some questions to Google and search for to get you started (I’ll be writing on these topics soon too):
- What is a Metamask wallet?
- How to secure my Metamask wallet?(SUPER IMPORTANT – I’ll do a write up on this for everyone)
- What security do I need on my computer to protect my investments?
- How much can I afford to lose (always invest in crypto with funds you can afford to lose)?
- What is a cold storage wallet? (Look into a wallet called Ledger)
- What NFT projects are coming up?
- Who are the Twitter influencers to follow for NFTs?
- What community do I most relate with and how can I contribute?
My wife told me that I can go on for days with NFTs. I think I can go on for years this way! I love the marketplace right now, where it’s headed, the potential, the growth, the community and more.
I’ll be writing a lot more on NFTs this year and sharing all my knowledge. If you’d like to connect you can find me on Twitter.
I’m working on some enormous projects myself and creating a whole Avatar project (I’ll write about this soon), so if you’re looking for more support on how to get started, follow me on Twitter and send me a message.
I’d love to help!
Read Next: Top Motivational Podcasts
