Discovery of the year - NFT tokens. This is a new, non-standard and very original way to make money. Regulars of social networks, programmers, representatives of show business, designers and creators of all stripes are selling works of art, musical compositions and ordinary “doodles” for fabulous sums in cryptocurrency. At the beginning of summer, the trend died down a little, but with the imminent launch of the NFT marketplace from the largest exchange Binance, it should begin to grow again.
What is behind universal tokenization? Is it really possible to make a fortune using NFT tokens and, for example, repeat the success of the digital artist Beeple, who sold an NFT collage of his works for $69 million ? Designers and creatives should definitely be interested in this prospect.
What are NFT tokens?
NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, are non-fungible tokens, “digital property”, a type of virtual money (cryptocurrency).
Unlike NTF, banknotes or ordinary cryptocurrency tokens are fungible: they can be exchanged, for example, for euros, or bitcoins for dollars. At the same time, one dollar is always equal to one dollar, and two bitcoins are always equal to two bitcoins.
With NTF the situation is different. Each token is unique and cannot be exchanged for a similar virtual bill. Hence the name - a hint at the impossibility of exchange. But it can be created by digitizing and converting the fruit of your labors and creativity into monetary equivalent.
Tokens are born in the same way as cryptocurrency; technically, the process of creating NTF is no different from bitcoins or ethers. However, this is where the similarities end.
Most NFT tokens are created on the Ethereum blockchain. The latter allows tokens to store information about the artwork to which the NFT is tied. In addition, in theory, blockchain provides a level of security and privacy at which the token cannot be hacked or stolen or violated copyright.
5 CreatureToadz
CreatureToadz
- Number of objects: 8888
- Market capitalization: 4165 ETH
- Daily trading volume: 313 ETH
- Official website: https://creaturetoadz.com/
CreatureToadz is a collaboration between several successful NFT communities. Its main goal is to create a decentralized autonomous organization and give NFTs new useful potential. The images (stylized frogs) are rendered by digital artist Skirano.
Tokens: a success story
Using tokens you can sell and buy real objects: paintings, soundtracks, games, videos. Typically, NFT tokens are encrypted, ensuring security and anonymity when used.
Tokens came into use in 2014, three years later the proven NTF technology was launched to the masses, based on smart contracts of the Ethereum cryptocurrency. The experimenters immediately posted a portrait of the Simpsons character Homer in the style of Pepe the frog. The drawing was tied to an NFT token, and a few months later its value was estimated at $500. And this is not the limit, because a year later a buyer was found who paid $38 thousand
So in 2022 they started talking about how art can be turned into virtual money. At that time, the game CryptoKitties was released: users raised digital kittens, each of which embodied a unique token. Each kitten was unique, with its own set of qualities, without repetitions. This comparison describes the very concept of non-fungible tokens.
Recently, the token was tied to a real work by the controversial graffiti artist Banksy. True, the painting was burned in New York, but the virtual memory remained. This is the first time that art lovers have purchased a work that no longer exists.
Specifically in the CIS, people started talking about NFT tokens this spring, in connection with the project of the artist Pokras Lampas, which was sold on the Foundation site for $29 thousand. In Ukraine, musicians are paying more attention to NFTs, some of whom announced their drops on the soon-to-launch NFT marketplace from Binance: Alyona Alyona, Potal, Tina Karol.
By the way, since November 2022, people have invested more than $174 million in NFTs !
Who managed to make a fortune?
The excitement around tokens is associated with wonderful stories of easy money that the Internet is replete with.
For example, on February 19, an animated gif file of Nyan Cat was sold for more than $500 thousand. This is the amount the 2011 meme was valued at - a huge amount of money was given for a flying cat with a body made of cookies. A few weeks later, Canadian-born singer Grimes sold her WarNymph collection for $6 million.
But it’s not only art that can be tokenized. For example, the founders of the social network Twitter, Jack Dorsey, proposed to financially evaluate the first tweet that emerged. The post sold for $2.9 million.
Of course, reading about how easy it is to make your first million, many unrecognized artists rushed to create tokens. And we were faced with the fact that the technology is new, which means there is no uniform instruction. But there are many questions.
If there are winners, there are also losers.
If you don't know what you're buying, don't spend $6,600 on it.
On the surface, the NFT market has been made to look like everyone is making money, but while crypto may indeed be rewriting the laws of economics, one thing remains inevitable: if someone makes money, someone else must lose it. NFTs can't magically generate wealth out of thin air; they make them for those who bought into the idea of quick income for those who came first to the market. As David Gerard, author of Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain, explains, “NFTs are entirely designed to benefit crypto scammers. The only purpose artists serve is to be enthusiastic dupes pumping up the concept of crypto. And, of course, buy cryptocurrency to pay for the “minting” of NFTs.”
Over time, this “pumping” will be exhausted, because the number of people willing to throw money into Ethereum and NFTs will begin to decrease. Given that this system depends on constant growth, it is safe to say that the value of "rare" goods will begin to fall, and the countless investors who have spent thousands of dollars on low-resolution puppy pictures may want to withdraw their money before the system is completely will fall apart. What else can you do with this puppy? Print it out and hang it in the toilet?
Selling prices probably don't even need to remain constant. It is enough for them to stop growing so rapidly and suddenly, then a safer option would be to store dollars in a bank than Ethereum in a wallet, where its price can fluctuate within a day by up to 20%. Once investor confidence begins to crack, collapse will happen quite quickly.
Ethereum rises in value as people continue to buy Ethereum, and this simulated ownership of supposedly rare digital resources is fabricated demand. Cryptocurrencies desperately need to find a reason for people to exchange their dollars for an even slightly more virtual monetary system, and NFTs are the most pressing solution so far. When it reaches a saturation point, the market will adjust and chaos may ensue.
This bubble will burst; the only question is when it will happen.
How to create/receive an NTF token?
There are two fundamentally different approaches here - creating tokens yourself or receiving/purchasing ready-made objects. There are several thematic platforms that allow you to “digitize” your work and then sell it. In this case, you need to pay a transaction fee on Ethereum. It depends on the load on the e-wallet network and can vary from a few to a couple of hundred dollars (when the network is overloaded).
The second way is to wait for your finest hour and receive a token as a gift from one or another NFT developer. Token creators sometimes hold free giveaways (called airdrops) or drawings, so if you're lucky, you'll become the owner of a unique token. For example, from time to time, the creator of Avalanche, Don Wonton, runs an attraction of unprecedented generosity, which he notifies on his profile on the social network Twitter. To participate in the drawing, you must share his tweet and leave your Ethereum wallet number in the comments.
You can also try your luck in the crypto aggregator Coingecko.com. Here, points and bonuses are awarded daily for online activity. When platform organizers offer free tokens to users, they can be redeemed using points earned (although most often they simply give various kinds of discounts). Therefore, it is not at all necessary to create something creative; sometimes it is enough to spend a lot of time online and follow all the trends.
The pursuit of NFT tokens is like a lottery. But while you're in the tokenization game, don't forget to stay safe when you're online. You can protect your network if you know what a VPN is. This is how the information you handle, as well as all transactions you make, are protected with end-to-end encryption. So your token will not be easy to steal, even if a cybercriminal decides to use super-advanced equipment.
How to buy digital collectibles on OpenSea?
After logging into OpenSea using your cryptocurrency wallet, click the “browse” tab and select one or all categories to view.
Here you can find digital collectibles and other rare items, as well as buy or make an offer to buy a specific asset.
Some digital collectibles are sold through an auction mechanism, as shown below. If you are the highest bidder at the end of the auction, payment will be processed automatically and you will receive the asset.
But, if a higher bid was made in the last 10 minutes, the auction is extended for another 10 minutes. So, if you really want to get your hands on a particular collectible, you should put in the effort.
Once you've selected your digital collectible, click the "place bid" button. Before you place your first trade, you must convert your ETH to WETH.
You will also need to give OpenSea access to your WETH when making a sale. These transactions only require gas.
You can submit a purchase request for digital collectibles that have not yet been offered for sale, which will help those who do not know what price to set for their items. Additionally, you can make an offer to purchase more than one item using the same ETH.
There are also many assets that sell for a certain price, such as the Diego Maradona card shown below. You can simply pay the price and receive the item.
Five steps to creating a successful NFT
Essentially, creating an NFT is another opportunity to monetize your creative skills. To get your own NFT token, follow a few simple steps.
1. To begin, select the digital file you want to digitize - digital art, article, musical composition, video, meme.
2. Although NTF can be linked to various blockchains, Ethereum is considered the most secure. Therefore, you will need an Ethereum wallet with a certain number of coins (more on this later in the article). By the way, one of the easiest applications to use is called MetaMask. It can be downloaded for Android/iPhone or as an extension in Chrome.
3. Next, we replenish our wallet. Despite the fact that the cost of creating an NFT fluctuates, practice shows that it is advisable to have at least $100 worth of cryptocurrencies in an electronic wallet. If you're making NFT tokens using OpenSea, the process is free, although you'll still need to link a wallet to create an account.
4. The next step is to select a digital marketplace on which you will “list” your token. Popular exchanges are OpenSea, Rarible and Minrable. Unlike OpenSea, other sites are not free, and your content must be “branded” (directly created as an NFT with associated fees) before you can sell it on the site.
On the one hand, the lack of advance payment is an undoubted advantage of the OpenSea exchange, but it is also its disadvantage: the platform is overflowing with works that do not have significant value from an artistic point of view. Accordingly, no one wants to buy them.
5. By linking your digital wallet to the exchange, you can create your first token. For example, on OpenSea you need to click the Create button in the menu, fill in the necessary information, and save. After this, click on the New Item option, upload the work and provide details for potential customers.
I don't want middlemen to take my money. How can NFTs help me?
Let's say you're Vasily again, and this time you're creating an NFT for your song.
A fan buys your NFT for $30,000. The marketplace takes 15%, so you earn 85% or $25,500. A month later, the fan resells it to someone else for $40,000 (you get 10% or $4,000 in royalties). Instead of only making $800, you made $29,500 in just two transactions, and there could be hundreds or even thousands of them.
Well, now let's say you're a buyer and you paid $1,000 to buy an NFT from an unknown artist. And after some time, this artist has become popular, and you can sell the same NFT for a much higher price.
Like stocks, NFTs allow fans to bet on the creator's potential.
NFT trading volume is entering a frenzy and many people are looking to ride the market to make higher profits.
But speculation is not always bad. In the long term, speculation causes increased interest among entrepreneurs in this area.
How to choose an NFT platform for selling tokens?
According to Secure Thought magazine, the following platforms for creating and buying and selling NFTs are the most popular this year:
- OpenSea takes first place in the ranking. Basically, works of digital art, all kinds of 3D objects, popular crypto collections, domain names, as well as sports or game cards are exhibited here. When registering on the platform, keep in mind: when selling a token, the platform retains 2.5% of the total amount. But creating your own brainchild will cost less than other options.
- The Superfarm platform is designed for gamers. By analogy with the name of the resource, the user creates a virtual “farm” and earns tokens. However, creating a “farm” is not easy: you need to write code, so for this purpose, many SuperFarm users are forced to turn to developers.
- Rarible focuses on works of art and is famous for its decentralization, which makes it different from OpenSea. Advantages of Rarible: the database is publicly available, which means everyone can monitor its quality. An undoubted advantage is that to work with tokens you do not need to have coding skills. Trading NFT tokens provides low commissions, which is also a nice bonus. At the same time, there are some concerns regarding safety at this site.
- Hoard Exchange helps players create NFT tokens without having to implement blockchain code. Here they buy tokens from games, digital art, and domain names. The platform also provides the opportunity to buy NFTs “on credit” - and even invest in a crypto fund.
- FansForever is a decentralized marketplace with cheap withdrawal fees. Celebrities often hang out here.
This market is developing so actively that this list will need to be edited in a month or two. There are a lot of new platforms now appearing, although the major players (OpenSea/Rarible) are still in the lead.
An alternative way for artists and musicians
In April, the free S!ng application was released, allowing you to create a token in a matter of seconds. This option is suitable for those who do not have time to choose a thematic platform or do not want to deal with the nuances of linking a token to a work.
By the way, the idea to create S!ng belonged to the former head of Apple, and the application itself is intended for users of smartphones based on iOS.
Artists upload illustrations to the application in JPEG, BMP or TIFF formats. You can also add audio files - WAV, MP3, MIDI, PTX, PTF, M4A, or record directly through the microphone.
Once the work is made public, it can be sold. In addition, the application does not limit the amount of amounts requested by the creators of the works.
At this stage, you can congratulate the happy creator on the fact that his work will now be seen by the world. Now it's time to talk about more practical things.
New life for digital artists
What is NFT? Literally, the abbreviation stands for non-fungible token, that is, a non-fungible token. Essentially, NFTs are analogous to securities. Purchasing an NFT token gives a person the right to own a digital object on the Internet: gifs, paintings, photographs, audio or any other file he purchased.
And the cost of these objects varies from mere pennies to tens of millions of dollars. For example, bidding for a collage of 5,000 works “Everydays” by digital artist Mike Winkelman, known under the creative pseudonym Beeple, started at hundreds of dollars and reached $69.35 million.
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Until now, digital artists have earned money mainly from commissioned works and were rarely considered real artists. In addition, there was simply nowhere to sell their work. The emergence of NFTs has shown that they create real sought-after art and can earn money by being creative.
How to open an Ethereum crypto wallet and how to work with it?
To start making money from creativity, you need to figure out a lot of details. Let's start with the fact that every art lover who is interested in the tokenization trend needs to open an Ethereum wallet.
How to do it?
1. Go to the official MyEtherWallet website and create a password of at least nine characters. Click the By Keystore File option - this will create a wallet.
2. Download the key storage file: Alternatively, download a .JSON document with an encoded version of the secret code that is suitable for MyEtherWallet. You can also download an unencrypted version of the private key.
3. To open the wallet, select the option in the menu corresponding to the key file. Confirm the action by clicking on Enter.
4. Now you will receive a personal wallet with your unique number. In the future, by unlocking the storage file on this site, you will be able to use any tokens.
Which wallet to choose for work?
The only question that arises at this stage is which specific wallet to choose. After all, Ethereum offers hardware, paper, desktop, browser and mobile. Hardware is considered the most secure: they say that even hackers cannot hack it. However, this option is paid. But you don’t have to pay for a desktop one: however, in this case you cannot be sure that nothing will happen to your cryptocurrency.
MetaMask
At this stage, most users use the MetaMask browser wallet. This is an extension that can be installed on Chrome, Brave, Opera and Firefox. By default, MetaMask allows you to work with Ether and ERC20 tokens, but it can be configured for other networks.
In addition, you will be able to work with Ethereum dApps directly in your browser. It’s convenient: you don’t need to download anything to your computer. The main disadvantage of MetaMask is the lack of an appropriate level of encryption, meaning users’ personal data may become known to third parties.
Enjin
Among mobile wallets for storing NFT tokens, Enjin stands out this year. Users easily convert one cryptocurrency to another.
Information security here is at its best: biometrics, auto-lock and other parameters protect personal data. However, this wallet also has a drawback: only a mobile version is available. And it only supports those NFT tokens that were created on Ethereum.
Trust Wallet
The next option is the Trust Wallet. This software supports many decentralized dApps and is easy to work with the OpenSea, MyCrypto Heroes, and Axis Infinity exchanges. At the moment, more than 5 million people have chosen Trust Wallet. However, this wallet is only suitable for storing digital currency. NFT tokens cannot be transferred here.
Math Wallet
Finally, the discovery of this year was Math Wallet - a universal wallet that supports hardware, browser, mobile and desktop versions. The downside of Math Wallet is the fact that the wallet is under development. Therefore, some users are afraid that security measures have not been implemented here. However, no incidents have been recorded so far.
To convert tokens into standard currency, you will need exchanges, virtual wallets with multi-currency functionality, or exchangers. Each of these methods allows you to transfer the NFT into the currency you are using and then transfer it to your Visa or MasterCard.
Total. The NFT niche is definitely the #1 trend this year. This is a good opportunity for designers and artists to make extra money from their creativity. Despite the fact that the hype has diminished a little, the technology itself has very good prospects in the future. Non-fungible tokens can help resolve copyright issues, are actively used in the gaming industry and attract collectors.
Have you already created your own NFT tokens? What do you think about this topic?
Known Origin - a platform with an increased royalty percentage
About the platform. More than 18 thousand works have been sold on Known Origin. Only digital paintings are posted here. The platform also has its own blog. There you can find platform news, collaboration stories, interviews and artist news.
There is no need to register on Known Origin. It will be enough to log into the site through MetaMask.
To post your work, you must first apply for artist account approval. Known Origin has its own hall of fame, where the highest paid authors, paintings and collections are collected.
Known Origin Artists Hall of Fame
Which cryptocurrency to pay with? ETH.
How much does it cost to post your work? Posting your work is free. The platform keeps 15% from the first sale of NFT art. For subsequent resales, the author receives a 12.5% royalty from the transaction.
Partnership programs. On OpenSea, NFTs are presented as a collection.
Conclusion
You can make money on NFTs by following news and joining communities that already include millions of people. Tokens can be bought and sold, created, and received for free. There are a huge number of platforms on the network - OpenSea, Sandbox, SuperRare, Rarible and others. The main way to make money is to sell at a higher price what you received at a lower price, or for free. And you can get it for free by participating in the life of thematic communities organized around a particular crypto exchange or token platform.
However, remember that token prices do not depend on anything other than the majority opinion and the personal preferences of the seller. And a huge number of them are created, most of which never increase in price.
It is much more interesting to see how NFT technology will be used and implemented not in the entertainment sector, but in business, logistics, information technology and the real world. It is possible that in a few years we will see franchises offering to open a business and make money on tokens. And NFT technology will be positioned as a competitive advantage.
