In the last couple of weeks, I’ve been diving into and learning more about NFTs or Non-fungible tokens. NFTs can be pretty much anything but the majority of them are digital art pieces that are individual or part of a set. The easiest way for me to understand NFTs, especially ones that are part of a set is to think of them as digital trading cards. Like opening a pack of cards, there is a chance to obtain a rare insert. However, unlike opening a pack of cards, when you’re minting an NFT, you’re minting one item with a chance at obtaining something with rare traits.
I’ve been noticing quite a few NFTs being sold for a considerable amount of money and since money is something I need, I’ve been researching how to create an NFT of my own and sell it on the market. It turns out, minting an NFT of my own and selling it on a market like OpenSea is not difficult. What I realized in my research was how much money is involved just to get something listed.
First, you have to have ETH or Ethereum in your account to start the process. Second, you need to pay Gas fees, listing fees, transaction fees, possible royalty fees, etc. You could end up spending eighty to hundreds of dollars to list an item that may or may not sell. If you don’t have something unique or of value that digital art collectors want, you could be throwing a bunch of money down the toilet.
This expensive side of NFTs limits the average person’s ability to get involved. For anyone like me who doesn’t have disposable income or the money to spend to make money on the ETH blockchain, I advise being an observer of the scene rather than a participant.
However, there is a more affordable way to get involved with minting and selling NFTs and that’s the Tezos blockchain. You can mint and trade art with Tezos on the Hic Et Nunc website or Hen for short. This is something I haven’t gotten involved with just yet but I plan on creating a Tezos wallet soon.
The bottom line from what I’ve experienced and researched so far is that NFTs are not a way to get rich quickly, at least not for most people. Some of the artwork is fantastic and yes, a lot of people are making a lot of money. But at the end of the day, this NFT business is akin to investing and you need to spend money to make money.
“NFTs are not a way to get rich quickly, at least not for most people”
Not unless you happened to be that guy who designed that animated GIF rainbow pooping flying cat. Did you see that? I think that one fetched $600K. There is no easy money at all except for the very “lucky” few (very few – and it rarely ever repeats for them) – something I think a lot of cryptocurrency speculators are likely to learn at some point. Blockchain is revolutionary but the masses are losing their minds. Just look at the quantity of low quality art on OpenSea that people imagine will sell. Even good art is hard to sell! Always has been.
I used to run a website called DigitalArt.org a long time ago that had contributions from a number of film industry matte painters. The works were spectacular. I imagine they’re making a name for themselves in the NFT market now. I wish assigning value to mere pixels had been a thing 15 years ago. I might be a digital art broker instead of a WordPress developer. 😉
Yes, I’ve seen that one. I think it’s called Squibbles or something. I wonder how NFTs are affecting places like DeviantArt. That’s where I’ve seen awesome art over the years.
I do wonder if DeviantArt is thinking of getting on board with NFT’s.