Missed the NFT rally of 2021? Count yourself lucky. Most NFTs are now trading at a 50-95% discount, so this could be your best opportunity to get started with NFTs and stock up on some bargains on top marketplaces like Liquidifty before the next rally. This article will explain everything you need to know, even if you’ve never owned an NFT.
Read Before Getting into NFTs: Will There Be Another Rally?
Before we dive into how to get into NFT art and buy collectibles on marketplaces, we should discuss something that’s bothering many: will NFT prices ever go back up?
Like any other market, crypto goes through cycles – only faster than stocks, real estate, and other assets. And every time that a cycle ends with a crash, many people announce that crypto is dead – only for it to rise again and even higher.
NFTs have now gone through their first real cycle, which lasted around two years. There was the first wave of hype around digital artworks like Beeple’s Everydays in spring 2021, when more people started getting into NFTs; and then a huge boom of AI-generated collections like Bored Apes Yacht Club and Sappy Seals in summer 2021. We’ve also seen a boom of NFT-based games like Axie Infinity, when the strongest characters sold for thousands of dollars.
The search volume for queries like ‘how to get an NFT’ on Google surged, and it seemed like digital pictures were a better store of value than Bitcoin itself. But the first NFT cycle came to an end together with the bubble in the stock market, and now most NFTs are trading many times cheaper than their all-time highs.
How to Get NFT Tokens
In order to get into NFTs for real and start building a portfolio, you’ll need to install a cryptocurrency wallet and deposit some crypto into it.
Not just any wallet, however: exchange wallets (like Binance, KuCoin etc.) won’t work. Neither will multicurrency wallets like Atomic, Mycelium, Bread Wallet, etc. You’ll need what’s called a non-custodial wallet: one that only you will have the private key for.
The single most popular crypto wallet for trading NFTs is MetaMask. It supports many NFT-friendly blockchains, such as Ethereum, BSC, Polygon, Avalanche, etc.
On the other hand, if you are interested in how to get a NFT on Solana, know that you’ll need the Phantom wallet, as MetaMask doesn’t support Solana.
If you don’t have any NFT assets yet, it’s probably better to start with MetaMask, as you’ll be able to use it for many other things, such as swapping tokens on decentralized exchanges, lending, yield farming, etc. Download it here and make sure to save the seed phrase in a safe location.
The second step is to top up MetaMask with crypto. Which one? That depends on the marketplace you want to use to get started with NFT trading. We’ll describe how it works on Liquidifty, a very popular NFT marketplace on the BSC (Binance Smart Chain) blockchain.
Liquidifty features an enormous range of gaming and metaverse NFTs. GameFi and metaverse projects are likely to be among the big winners in the next cycle, so it’s worth focusing on NFT marketplaces that specialize in this market.
Plus, the prices for gaming NFTs are far lower than for digital collectibles like Mutant Apes or World of Women. This doesn’t mean that the art quality is lower, though: for instance, the popular Drunk Robots project on Liquidifty features amazingly detailed robot designs.
As for the BSC blockchain, it is very popular among gaming projects and has one of the biggest NFT ecosystems out there. Gas fees are quite low on BSC, which is crucial for games, and transactions get confirmed fast. For a beginner NFT collector, BSC is preferable to Ethereum, as you’ll spend many times less in fees.
But let’s get back to topping up MetaMask. To use Liquidifty or any other BSC-based NFT marketplace, you’ll need BNB, the official tokens of both Binance Smart Chain and Binance Chain. The easiest place to buy them is – you’ve guessed it – Binance, but all major crypto exchanges have BNB.
Once you’ve bought BNB at a centralized exchange with a credit card, BTC, or some other way, you can withdraw them to MetaMask. Note your MetaMask address is the same for all the chains, so just copy it, paste it into the exchange’s Withdraw section, and send the BNB to MetaMask.
Finally, on the marketplace page, click on Connect Wallet and allow MetaMask to connect to the app. Before clicking on Confirm, read carefully which privileges you are about to give the dApp: it should be able to suggest transactions for signing, but not initiate and/or confirm transactions on its own.
That’s it – you’re all set to start a collection of NFTs on a BSC-powered marketplace like Liquidifty! Now it’s time for the exciting part: how to get NFT collectibles and choose the best projects.
How Do I Get an NFT on Liquidifty?
Choosing an NFT among thousands when your budget is limited can be really tough. To make your life easier, focus on the hot or trending collections first: they will have higher trading volumes, so if you decide to sell your NFT, it will be easier to find a buyer.
On almost every NFT marketplace, there will be a ‘Top’ or ‘Trending’ section on the home page. On Liquidifty, you’re likely to see Drunk Robots, Liquid Monsters, and MASD Games among the leaders.
The next factor to consider is the floor price. Are you prepared to spend $100 or only $10? Luckily, in the world of gaming and metaverse, popular NFTs are surprisingly affordable, but there are still big differences between collections.
Don’t forget art and style. You should buy NFTs that you really like, not just those that you think will generate a profit. There’s never a guarantee of a successful sale in the future, so ask yourself: will you be OK with holding this NFT for months or using it in the game if you can’t sell it?
By now you should have a small list of NFTs with the following characteristics:
1) well within your budget (preferably below $100 for newbies)
2) popular with other users on the marketplace (good trading volume)
3) art that you appreciate for its own sake.
Rate each of the NFT projects on all these points; the resulting scores should tell you which NFT would be the best buy.
The Final Steps On How to Get NFTs
The hardest part is over: now all you have to do is purchase an NFT. Make sure that your wallet is connected to the marketplace, pick an NFT and click on Buy Now.
Agree to the terms of sale in the pop-up window (including the marketplace’s 2.5% service fee). MetaMask will open; confirm the transaction there (and make sure that you have enough BNB to pay).
Once the payment is confirmed, it will take up to a couple of minutes for it to be finalized, depending on the BSC network load. The NFT will appear in your Liquidifty dashboard: click on your wallet address in the top right and choose ‘My NFT’.
Congrats – now you know how to get NFTs on marketplaces. The next step is to do lots of research and choose the best ones for the next cycle. Don’t delay too long, though: you never know for how long the current low prices will last.