fourteen

Remember those books in school that used to have pictures in the middle? That was my favorite part of the book growing up.

You would have to battle through the first half of the book just so you could get to the pictures. Or you could cheat and look at the pictures before starting the book – not nearly as rewarding.

Anyways, today we have our first picture(s).

This is the NFT that I just purchased on ThetaDrop.com. It’s an NFT from The Secret Pineapple Society – the most successful drop to date on ThetaDrop.

If you don’t know what an NFT is, there are MANY videos and articles available online that will go into much greater depth. I’m not going to do that here. I’m just going to provide a few tips on purchasing your first NFT.

An NFT, big picture, stands for NON-FUNGIBLE TOKEN. It is an asset (picture, video, song, car, house, etc) that is NOT interchangeable and has it’s own unique properties and attributes. I will show you one of the tokens I own and we can explain what makes it non-fungible.

The Thetzilla token pictured above is non-fungible. Although there are 25,000 of these that have been created, this can easily be identified by it’s serial #. Using the serial #, you can prove your ownership on the blockchain and you can also access it’s sales history. Just to reiterate, even though there are 25,000 of these that look IDENTICAL to this, there is only one that is serial numbered #2,879/25,000 – making it non-fungible.

Money on the other hand, is fungible. Think of a 1997 Canadian Dollar. There are millions of these floating around and they are interchangeable. Meaning, you could go to the bank and exchange one dollar and get another dollar. They are fungible.

There’s a ton of hype around NFTs and in my opinion, it’s definitely warranted. However, I also believe that 95% of the NFTs will eventually crash in price. Because there’s a ton of them coming onto the market every single day, and most people are just buying them with the intention of selling.

I believe that everyone should be buying an NFT over the holidays. It may end up being a complete waste of a couple hundred dollars, BUT you will familiarize yourself with the market and you could end up with a gem if you’re willing to hold onto it for a few years. Think of it as an investment in education.

Before you dive into it, you should be doing a bit of research to learn HOW to buy and WHAT to buy. I wanted to write a blog this morning to help you through part of that process and help you refine your search time.

Here’s what I look for when purchasing NFTs:
1. Find a reputable exchange for purchasing your NFTs.
Some of my favorite NFT marketplaces include; opensea.io, thetadrop.com, and solsea.io.
2. Find a reputable creator.
The exchanges listed above all have verified creators – similar to a blue check mark on Instagram. This should add a little more assurance to your purchase.
3. Look for projects with a large or growing community.
Twitter is actually a great place for this. You can find creators on Twitter and look to see what kind of community they have. One of the main reasons I got into the Secret Pineapple Society was the community and the apparent buzz around it. The CEO of Theta, Mitch Liu, was tweeting about it so I figured there must be something there.
*Keep a close eye on level of engagement – NOT their number of followers. Many scam accounts are able to purchase followers and give the impression that they’re legit. Thankfully these scams are fairly easy to spot if you know what you’re looking for. For example, if an account has 10k followers but their last few tweets only had a couple likes, it’s probably some sort of scam.
4. Look for NFTs that have special rights, access or privileges.
I bought two NFTs this week that have special access. The Secret Pineapple Society NFT grants access to “The Grove” which I’m guessing will be an online community with different perks involved. And I bought the Katy Perry Golden Lion which grants you with special access to her nostalgia store for her new Tour.
5. Look for scarcity.
Generally speaking, an NFT serial numbered out of 25 will have more value than one serial numbered out of 250,000.
6. Buy something that YOU love.
Don’t purchase every NFT with the intention of flipping and selling it in a week. If that’s your sole purpose in the market you will get wrecked one day. The NFT of my Pineapple above doesn’t have the rare attributes that others do, but I love it because of the simplicity and I feel it’s a good representation of me. It’s something that I plan on holding onto long-term to see what happens with the Secret Pineapple Society so I wanted something that was easy on the eyes.
7. Factor in ALL the costs.
Some NFTs – including the ones on opensea.io use ETH. If you’ve dealt with ETH before you know how painfully excruciating the gas fees are. If you pay $100 in ETH gas fees to purchase an NFT for $200, the true cost is $300. So when you eventually go to sell your NFT on the marketplace, if the value grew 10% annually, you would need to hold it for 7-8 years just to turn a profit on it. If you listed it tomorrow for $210 you would actually lose $90 on the transaction.
8. Find ones that you can take off the exchange and into your own wallet.
I personally haven’t purchased anything from Autograph (Tom Brady’s NFT company) but from what I understand, you are not able to take the NFTs off the exchange and put them into your own secure wallet. This is a problem that will likely be fixed over time, but make sure you find an exchange with KYC (know your customer) so you are able to withdraw the NFTs and get them into your own possession.

The main focus on NFTs currently is art and collectibles. However, that’s only scratching the surface with what NFTs will become. As myself and many others predict, everything you own will have an NFT attached to it someday. Your house, your car, your watch collection. Every song or movie you purchase will have an NFT. The ticket to get into an NFL game will be an NFT.

Don’t buy anything you can’t afford to lose, and have some fun with it. What a world we are moving into! Trustless and transparent.

Peace + Love