Often in this day and age the media controls influence over people. You often see celebrities or other influential individuals advertising or promoting an NFT. They can do this by either making a post, or simply making it their profile picture. This is where the majority of people lose their money. If you are going to get into NFTs, blindly following whatever an influencer promotes is not a good way to make money. From years of experience, I would recommend that you actually take the time to look into the project. Read the roadmap (plan for the future of the project).

Some may argue that their favorite influencer is promoting a certain NFT, and it will go to the moon. Oftentimes the majority of influencers promoting NFTs are paid off by the project, and they are just trying to make a profit off of their audience. This, in NFT terminology, is called a “rug-pull”. This is highly illegal by the way, and the government is actively investigating thousands of individuals who have committed fraud in this way.

There are a lot of negatives to NFTs, but there are also some things that make NFTs special. Before I get into that, I am going to provide some basic information that might be able to help one getting started into NFTs. One, you are going to need a crypto wallet. There are several different kinds of wallets, most are free, unless you get a hard storage crypto wallet. You might ask, what’s the difference between a crypto wallet on an app, and a hard storage wallet. The difference is that the hard storage wallet is an actual tangible device you get that requires a password verified on the device to send any crypto. It is by far the most secure wallet you can have. But as a beginner I recommend starting with one of the apps like MetaMask or Phantom. Buying an NFT is a fairly simple process, but can be challenging for a first–time user. You need to have the crypto currency necessary to purchase the NFT in your wallet. If you don’t know what currency that is being used in the project you are looking at buying into, they should have it listed somewhere. On mint day you go to the project website, connect your wallet, and successfully mint your NFT. This NFT will show up in your crypto wallet. In order to sell NFTs I recommend OpenSea. It is the number one NFT marketplace. But, now onto the knowledge that I have that can be useful. A quick disclaimer, this is not financial advice.

NFTs currently are a battle of art and utility to the public eye. Some buy NFTs for art, some buy it for the utility the project has to offer. What I personally look into is the community. If an NFT project has a strong community it will survive, and the price will rise. People on the outside looking in will get FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), and this is what has created some of the most successful NFT projects. This raises the question how do I know if a community is strong? This is simple, look at how they respond as a community on the various apps NFT communities thrive on, such as Twitter, and Discord (These are the main apps where NFT projects communicate). If you have a group of over one thousand people saying GM (Good Morning) to each other with the same profile picture, people are going to get intrigued. It all comes down to attention economy, which I will go over in an article next week. If you take anything from this column today please let it be DYOR, or do your own research. It is essential.