Non Fungible Tokens As An Alternative Investment?
Non Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are a method of establishing ownership of a digital token. Typically the token is encoded in a way that represents a specific digital object. This could be a photo, video, or other file. Typically these are stored on a blockchain ledger.
Fungibility is the key difference between NFTs and other cryptocurrency tokens. What is fungibility? Fungibility implies equal value between assets. Because an NFT is unique, it is not fungible.
If you are interested in learning more about cryptocurrency, check out Cryptocurrencyguru.org, the internet’s cryptocurrency experts.
NFT Token – What Is Ethereum?
Ethereum is a cyptocurrency like Bitcoin. It is currently the second more popular cryptocurrency. The technology holds a lot of promise and is associated with “smart contracts”. While Bitcoin is viewed as currency by many, the Ethereum blockchain is more of an infrastructure. Smart contracts could change the field of finance, in particular mortgage and security trading.
What Is ERC721 Token?
Non Fungible Tokens may also be referred to as ERC721 tokens. The ERC-721 token standard represents a single unique asset that cannot be interchanged.
Check out the article Non-Fungible Tokens – Explaining NFTs, ERC-721 and ERC-1155 by Ivan On Tech Academy.
Non Fungible Token Price
The price of non fungible tokens is all over the board. Some cost almost nothing, while others go for millions of dollars. Here are the sales price of some of the most expensive NFTs:
- Everydays: the First 5000 Days – First piece of purely NFT artwork – $69.3 Million
- Cryptopunk #3100 – One of nine Aliens – $7.6 Million
- Rick and Morty “The Best I Could Do” – Rick and Morty artwork – $1 Million
List Of Non Fungible Tokens
You know how the mainstream media works. Technology trends go in “hype cycles” where a topic is covered a bunch for awhile and then disappears. NFTs have been in a hype cycle over the last few months. It seems to be the second time this has occurred. Below are a few tokens that have received a ton of media attention.
- CryptoPunks – 10,000 unique character offerings
- CryptoKitties – Digital assets that were part of a Ethereum blockchain based game
- Nyan Cat Meme
- LeBron James dunk highlight from NBA Top Shot
- Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sold the first-ever tweet as an NFT
Non Fungible Tokens Examples
Folks interested in non fungible tokens fall into two categories. Those interested in Blockchain Gaming, or those interested in NFT Art collecting.
Best Non Fungible Tokens
Just like any other term on the world wide web, people want to know what are the “best” non fungible tokens. This is a hard question. What is the best autographed baseball? What is the best band to sign a guitar? A NFT is only worth as much as other people are willing to pay for it. If you are getting started down this path, simply get something that brings you joy. Because it might not be worth anything tomorrow.
Free Nft Tokens
Like anything in life, free is good. Especially coming from a website that is about getting ahead financially by saving money on the little purchases in life. Similar to other non fungible tokens that come at a price, there are free tokens available associated with blockchain based games.
One example is a unique bunny that can be claimed for the game BNBBunnies. If you have traded NFTs previously you may be eligible for to claim a free RARI token. RARI is the Governance Token of the Rarible NFT Platform and the first of it’s kind in the Non-Fungible Token (NFT) Space.
NFTs How To Buy
There are many growing marketplaces as cryptocurrency and NFTs in particular become more mainstream. There are a few steps on your way to becoming a product owner of a valuable one of a kind NFT.
- Get an account on Coinbase. This is where you will purchase Ethereum, the cryptocurrency supporting smart contracts. I personally prefer Robinhood for crypto, but that doesn’t work as well for these purposes.
- Make an NFT Marketplace Account. I have listed a few of the most popular sites below.
- Transfer your Ethereum or other cryptocurrency to your NFT marketplace account.
- Submit a bid for an NFT. Most marketplaces work in the auction style.
Best NFT Marketplace
- OpenSea
- Rarible
- SuperRare
- Foundation
- AtomicMarket
- Myth Market
How To Make An NFT: Create Non Fungible Tokens
For artists and creative types there is a lot of interest in creating NFTs. You work immediately becomes available to the global marketplace without an intermediary. Who doesn’t want to sell a piece of digital art for millions of dollars?
Because many of the NFTs are simply JPG files there is not much required in terms of technical know how. Simply follow the steps above to create an account on an NFT marketplace. In the same manner of cryptocurrency, you need to think carefully about security with NFTs.
Also, a new, free app called S!ng makes it easy for anybody to mint an NFT of a work on the Ethereum blockchain.
