The world of NFTs has continued to explode ever since the record-breaking $69 million sale of a digital collage by crypto artist Beeple in 2021. Big names in TV, sports and music continue to get in on the trend: just look at Mila Kunis, Tom Brady and John Legend, who all have companies that are maximizing on NFT technology. That enough can make people want to buy one for themselves.
If you’re still a little hazy on understanding NFTs, what you need to know is that NFTs are units of data (unique code) that provide a secure record of ownership on a blockchain infrastructure (examples are Ethereum or Solana). NFTs, which stand for non-fungible tokens, are often associated with a digital asset like an image or video that lives on a blockchain. Some NFT projects you might recognize are CryptoPunks or Bored Ape Yacht Club.
NFTs can’t be copied or altered, so they can be used to track ownership of property that can’t be replicated, like the rights to an image. This technology is being applied to purchasing digital art, music and sports moments. Below, we’ve compiled a list of the top 20 places you can buy NFTs.
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How to Buy NFTs
Today, most NFTs are purchased with ether (ETH), the native currency of the Ethereum network, which can be converted from U.S. dollars on exchanges like Coinbase, Kraken and Gemini.
Unlike bitcoin, which functions mainly as a payment network and cryptocurrency, blockchain networks such as Ethereum and Solana let users build apps that can store personal data and set rules for complex financial transactions. These are called smart contracts, which are digital contracts stored on a blockchain that are automatically executed when certain conditions are met, like when an NFT transfers ownership and the original artist receives royalties. In order to buy NFTs, you will need to establish a digital wallet to store your cryptocurrency. Examples include Gemini, Metamask, Binance and Coinbase, which you can connect to the marketplace where you plan to buy NFTs like at one of the marketplaces below.
NFTs are often sold through an auction system where you will put in a bid for the NFT. Some sites like OpenSea offer an option to buy the NFT now for a set price.
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Where to Buy NFTs
Just how fast is the market growing? Research released in January 2022 from Emergen Research shows that the global NFT market size is expected to reach more than $3.5 trillion in 2030 — the market size reached $340 million in 2020, for comparison. Still, there have been multiple reports of theft and fraud. Fees and commissions vary widely, and the electricity needed to run the Ethereum network is a source of massive carbon emissions. Those entering the market should do so with eyes wide open, understanding that it’s important to assess marketplaces, including occasionally inconspicuous FAQs and service terms, with scrutiny.
Keeping all that in mind, if you’re wondering where to get started, here’s a look at 20 marketplaces and what they offer buyers and sellers.
Sorare is a cryptocurrency-based fantasy soccer league where users can collect player cards as NFTs and then use them in online competitions. The site has more than 200 licensed clubs, including the teams of Major League Soccer, and all transactions are done in Ethereum. Though users can participate in the fantasy league by purchasing low-cost digital players, exclusive NFT collectibles outcompete others through scoring multipliers.
Location: Paris, France
Category: Sports collectibles
Crypto.com’s NFT marketplace allows users to buy and sell digital collectibles from brands, celebrities and artists like Snoop Dogg, Aston Martin and UFC. Purchases can be made with a credit or debit card, your account balance on Crypto.com or with Crypto.com Pay, using the app or a wallet like Metamask or WalletConnect that supports ERC20 tokens.
Location: Singapore
Category: Digital art, collectibles
SuperRare is a peer-to-peer marketplace for buying and selling single-edition digital artwork. A tile of windows similar to an Instagram profile showcases art, list prices, sale prices and timed auctions. The site is home to a curated selection of artists and brands and has features like an active social feed, a calendar of upcoming exhibitions and an editorial page with profiles and artist statements. All transactions are made using ether, the native cryptocurrency to the Ethereum network.
Location: Newark, Delaware
Category: Digital art
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Launched in February 2021, Foundation has hosted NFT sales of the viral internet meme Nyan Cat, Pak’s Finite and work by creators such as Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova and Edward Snowden. Creators’ work is arranged in a grid of cards, with trending auctions at the top of the page followed by featured artists. Works are listed at a reserve price, and bids can be placed for 24 hours, with a 15-minute extension if bids are placed in the last 15 minutes. The platform is built on Ethereum.
Location: San Francisco, California
Category: Digital art
Founded in 2017 by the software development team of Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah, OpenSea claims on its website to be “the first and largest NFT marketplace.” A On the marketplace, which is filterable by price and rarity, you can find everything from virtual real estate to sound loops from The Weeknd. A stats tab — almost like a stock ticker — ranks sellers by volume, average sale price and the number of assets sold. OpenSea supports the blockchains of Ethereum, Polygon and Klatyn. Buyers can purchase fixed-price NFTs directly from sellers or bid on NFTs in auctions, with an offer record stored in the user’s profile.
Location: New York, New York
Categories: Digital art, music, games, domain names, virtual worlds, sports, collectibles
Rarible is an NFT marketplace where users can mint, buy and sell digital collectibles ranging from gummy bear GIFs to animated videos commemorating sports milestones such as boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s undefeated 50-0 record. The layout is similar to Spotify, with a scrollable stack of columns featuring top sellers, hot collections and live auctions. A governance token known as RARI allows the most active buyers and sellers to vote for platform upgrades and participate in moderation decisions.
Location: Wilmington, Delaware
Categories: Digital art, photography, music, games, metaverse, memes
MakersPlace is a gallery of digital artwork stylized around creator collections and profiles. Each piece is issued and signed by the creator and permanently recorded and verified through the blockchain. The site includes detailed artist profiles, and work can be purchased through digital auctions or fixed price sales, using ether or a standard credit card.
Location: San Francisco, California
Category: Digital art, virtual reality, short film, motion animation
Backed by Marc Benioff-owned Time Ventures and billionaire investor Mark Cuban, Mintable is a two-sided marketplace for buying and selling NFTs that resembles eBay. Built on the Ethereum and Zilliqa blockchains, the site is integrated with MetaMask, where buyers can set up crypto wallets. Creators have options to mint free “gasless” NFTs, short-run printable series or traditional transaction-based items. Once they’ve set up profiles and loaded their wallets, buyers can purchase listed items or bid on auctions, with winners notified by email.
Location: Singapore
Categories: Digital art, photography, videos, games, templates, domain names
Async allows users to create and collect interactive NFTs. Async Art allows artists to tokenize the individual layers of their art, whether its audio, video or photos. When an artist mints programmable art, they deploy instructions for how their finished media should be rendered.
Location: San Francisco, California
Category: Digital art, music, video
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Launched as a beta by DapperLabs in early 2020, fans can collect and trade NBA- and WNBA-licensed digital “moments” on NBA Top Shot. Released in limited-edition sets or available through open trade on the broader marketplace, moments feature video highlights, player stats and box scores. Collectors can display curated collections, follow their favorite teams and trade assets secured on the Flow blockchain.
Location: Vancouver, Canada
Category: Sports collectibles
Designed by the Vietnamese startup Sky Mavis, Axie Infinity is a Pokémon-inspired video game, where players collect cartoon pets, battle other players and build farming kingdoms. Characters and land plots are encrypted as NFTs, which can be bought on the online marketplace.
Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Category: Video game
Venly’s peer-to-peer NFT marketplace allows users to create, buy and sell game characters, weapons and collectibles without needing to worry about getting cryptocurrency first. Users can link their accounts to digital wallets to buy and sell assets from blockchain games, such as The Sandbox and Vulcan Verse. Venly advertises being the first blockchain agnostic marketplace, and it allows for payments in U.S. dollars via PayPal.
Location: Antwerp, Belgium
Read more: How To Buy NFTs – Forbes Advisor
Category: Video games, metaverse
Nifty Gateway is a centralized U.S. dollar marketplace that works with artists and brands to create Nifties — a branded term for NFTs. Sales are structured around “drops,” in which collections are made available for a limited time. After a drop ends or an artwork sells out, Nifties can be resold through the site’s peer-to-peer marketplace. Nifty Gateway has featured work by artists and brands like Beeple, BD White, Cam Hicks, Forbes and Playboy. Now owned by cryptocurrency exchange, Gemini, Nifty Gateway operates at high volume and includes a discovery page and a log of sitewide activity.
Location: San Francisco, California
Category: Digital art, collectibles
Zora is a decentralized auction house with an overtly activist manifesto: to help artists recapture value that labels, galleries and big brands have traditionally taken as a commission for service and distribution. Buyers can find music, video, images, GIFs and text NFTs for sale through linked Ethereum wallets like WalletConnect and Coinbase. In addition to serving as a marketplace, Zora is an open-source protocol, built on the most common standard for NFTs, called ERC-721. Creators can buy and resell NFTs anywhere that integrates with the protocol and specify royalty percentages for secondary sales.
Location: Los Angeles, California
Category: Digital art
Self-branded on its homepage as “the first-ever virtual world owned by users,” Decentraland functions as a self-contained marketplace where users can buy and sell land, estates, avatar clothing and names registered on the Ethereum ledger. MANA is Decentraland’s fungible, ERC20 cryptocurrency token. MANA is burned, or spent, in exchange for LAND parcels.
Location: Beijing, China
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Category: Video games, metaverse
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The Sandbox is a video game where players can monetize experiences through the Ethereum blockchain. A cryptocurrency known as SAND functions as the game’s usage fee and utility token. A web-based marketplace lets users upload, publish and sell creations made in VoxEdit, a 3D voxel modeling package, as NFTs. Creations purchased or developed using the editor can be placed on land parcels, thereby altering the game mechanics through scripted behaviors.
Location: San Francisco, California
Read more: How To Buy NFTs – Forbes Advisor
Category: Video games, metaverse
Founded in Stockholm by Christina Löwenström and Johan Forsman Löwenström, Zeptagram allows musicians to tokenize tracks as NFTs and sell a portion of the ownership rights to fans and investors. Through smart contracts, musicians and their supporters receive royalties on secondary sales. The company has developed its own currency, Zeptacoin, which is used for payment of royalties and trading of music rights on the platform.
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Category: Music, art, games, photography, video
A platform engineered by Cent, Valuables lets people auction off their tweets for payment in ether. Buyers can place bids by entering the tweet’s URL or the user’s handle in a search bar. Minimum offers start at $1 unless the seller has set a reserve price. After they place a bid, the buyer is directed to the seller’s tweet, where they can let the user know they have made an offer. This is the site where Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey famously sold his autographed first tweet for $2.9 million.
Location: San Francisco, California
Category: Tweets
ThetaDrop is an NFT marketplace powered by the video and entertainment blockchain Theta Network, calling itself “fast, cheap, green.” ThetaDrop incorporates live streaming during auctions and NFT drops, along with tie-ins to live television and cable broadcasts. It launched with the World Poker Tour.
Location: San Jose, California
Category: Digital art, images, music
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KnownOrigin is an artist-driven NFT marketplace for rare digital art that allows both collectors and artists to trade their NFT art on the Ethereum blockchain.
Location: Manchester, UK
Category: Digital art
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