If you want to run with the latest craze for NFTs, you need to know the best NFT marketplaces for buying and selling objects that only live in the digital world.
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NFTs – short for non-fungible tokens – are simply virtual certificates that prove ownership of your digital possessions.
An NFT marketplace is a virtual shopping mall or gallery where collectors and traders can browse anything digital, from a small artefact to an entire world.
Where you shop depends on whether you are an NFT creator, buyer or reseller and are interested in a specific niche.
Read on for tips about deciding where to shop and find the most trusted online NFT marketplaces.
Buying NFTs
NFTS are a new phenomenon, and trading or investing is unregulated – which means it’s pretty much everyone for themself in the metaverse.
NFT valuations are subjective and depend on many factors, like fashion, how many identical or similar objects exist, and the artist’s popularity.
Don’t forget living artists and creators can generate more works that might devalue the price of an existing NFT.
Saying that, some NFTs change hands for millions, like Michah Dowbak – creating NFTs as Mad Dog Jones – has had his output valued at $18 million by the website Cryptoart.
Buying NFTs is a simple and enjoyable experience but a little different from the shopping you are used to with online superstores like Amazon.
- Like shopping elsewhere, match the NFT marketplaces you frequent by narrowing down the niches you want to follow
- Decide which coins or tokens you want to deal in, which is effectively choosing a blockchain
- Go to a specialist, not a general seller – resellers buy wholesale and mark up for a profit, so they are often more expensive than going directly to the NFT creator
- Check the market’s security
- When satisfied with your chosen NFT marketplace, open an account – but you must fund your wallet with coins or tokens the store supports before doing so
Where to go to buy or sell NFTs
Once you have chosen the NFTs you want to buy, it’s time to look at where the best NFT marketplaces are.
OpenSea
is the market-leading superstore for a huge range of NFTs. Creators can mint their own NFTs, while owners can set up their storefronts. This platform accepts a wide range of cryptocurrency and boasts the site is the first and largest NFT store.
Axie Marketplace
is the go-to NFT store for fans of the video game Axie Infinity. Players can buy avatars, worlds and in-game objects, like weapons and powers. The site crypto is Axie Shards which are transferable to other NFT marketplaces and some exchanges
Larva Labs
is the originator of the celebrated CryptoPunks NFTs, given away at the start and now changing hands for millions.
NBA Top Shot Marketplace
is a closed shop for basketball fanatics in the States. The National Basketball Association handles the sale of the game’s memorabilia and video moments for the men’s and women’s teams in the States. The platform only allows NBA NFTs, which can’t be bought or sold anywhere else.
Rarible
is like the Amazon for NFTS with a massive stock of art, music, video and collectables on offer. The Rarible token is the platform’s crypto. Big brands are shifting towards the platform with Yum! Brands and creative software giant Adobe buying into NFTs.
SuperRare
is following the trend of NFT megastores like OpenSea and Rarible. Hard to see why to shop at SuperRare when a lot of the stock is available on OpenSea – the same goes for Rarible.
Foundation
has already chalked up $100 million of NFT sales in just over a year. The app is not for faint-hearted creators as minting on the no-frills platform can be a little complicated. Plenty of art is on display in the gallery while paying is easy with Ether.
Nifty Gateway
a play on NiFTy – is a Winklevoss twins project that boasts work by some of the best-known established artists in the market, such as Beeple and singer Grimes. Nifty is slightly different from the rest. The platform curates art and stores customer NFTs in an online gallery cum wallet
Big Brands And NFTs
NFTs are a way of monetising brands, art, music and video plus a whole lot more as long as the format is digital.
Businesses are exploring how to make money by releasing NFT collectables or limited editions.
Insidious marketeers are hijacking the technology to build brand loyalty, raise cash for charity or to open a new revenue stream.
Here are some of the more notable commercial NFTs:
- Coca-Cola released animated NFTs that included surprise rewards for the first owners, including a branded Coke bubble jacket that the owner can wear in Decentraland – a 3D virtual world.
- Fast-food chain McDonald’s has promoted the return of the McRib with a series of NFT collectibles. To qualify for drop, one of the NFTs, customers had to retweet the restaurant’s messages about McRibs.
- American football teams in the NFL offered free virtual tickets to fans to buy or trade
- Fashion house Gucci auctioned a looping video edited from a four-minute film shown at a runway show, raising $25,000 for charity.
Owning an NFT
An inherent problem with owning NFTs is the blockchain will store the smart contract proving ownership but the NFT file – like a jpeg image – is stored somewhere else.
For example, your NFT has a gallery page somewhere on the internet, but the platform changes the url. That means your NFT lives in a folder on a web server that you cannot access unless you have administrative access or know someone that does.
That’s OK if you have spent a few cents or dollars on an in-game artefact but unacceptable if you have spent millions on an exclusive artwork.
Currently, technology offer three ways to store NFTs:
- In a digital wallet
- The InterPlanetary File System
- In a hardware wallet
The first two options are not entirely safe from hackers, while hardware wallets can be disconnected from the internet for safe-keeping.
The safekeeping buck stops with the NFT owner, who has to make the arrangements for storage. However, if platforms and creators expect to sell NFTs for huge sums of money, then the industry must come up with a way to make them secure.
Best Places To Shop For NFTs FAQ
How do I mint artwork to sell as an NFT?
Some of the platforms listed above allow registered users to mint NFTs – check out Rarible, Enjin and Forge.
What’s the most expensive NFT to date?
The Merge, a digital artwork by the anonymous Pak sold in December 20221 for $91.8 million on Nifty Gateway.
Which NFT platform is best?
Like most retailers, each online platform has pros and cons, so picking the best is down to personal preference. The decision about which to use generally comes down to the type of NFT you are buying or selling, which blockchain your favourite creators are on and which cryptocurrency you have decided is best for you.
What’s the killer USP for NFTS?
The killer unique selling point (USP) was created when someone came up with the idea of linking proof of ownership of a digital art work with the blockchain as proof of ownership. The intention is to drive down fraud in the sector.
Can anyone copy a digital file?
Yes, any fan of an artist’s work can copy the original digital file for their own use, but the owner highlighted in the blockchain owns the file and can resell copies or the right to use an image or soundtrack, for example.
Who owns the copyright to an NFT?
Buying an NFT does not grant the NFT owner any intellectual property rights unless the contract of sale specifically includes them. NFTs are tokens that represent ownership of an asset but are separate from the asset. So, the IP rights are retained by the artist but the collector owns the hash entry for that item on a blockchain.
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