I Bought an NFT. Now What?

So I bought an NFT.

Let’s take a step back: I have little to no knowledge of cryptocurrency, but I figured I’d give it a go. What’s the worst that could happen? A nosebleed? Accidentally setting off a chain of events that powers down the grid on the Eastern seaboard? Fame and fortune?

It’s fitting that I set out on this journey on the day that Bloomberg declared the NFT bubble had burst, with prices crashing 70% from their peak in mid-March. Nevertheless, I sat down at my computer and decided I wouldn’t log off until I had an NFT. Maybe it was a good time. Maybe prices were dipping and I wouldn’t have to spend as much on my NFT.

I’d first heard about NFTs in 2018 in a Paris Review article about the Rare Digital Art Festival. The term “non-fungible token” or “NFT” wasn’t used in that article but that’s what the digital artifacts in the article would come to be known as. “Non-fungible” basically means they are unique, one of a kind. With currency, you can trade a $1 bill for another $1 bill, and it doesn’t matter where that $1 bill came from. With NFTs, each token comes with a unique code. Each one is different and could be worth vastly different amounts, even if they’re basically the same thing.  

NFTs have actually been around since 2014, when Brooklyn-based artist Kevin McCoy sold a GIF to tech blogger Anil Dash and then published the transaction on the blockchain. Essentially, the blockchain is a digital ledger, and users on computers on the blockchain all around the world verify each transaction. NFTs are digital files (JPEGs, videos, GIFs, etc) tied to transactional bits of code on the blockchain that can be bought and sold with cryptocurrency. 

Which is to say, you need some cryptocurrency to purchase NFTs. I already had a Coinbase account, which can take up to three days to activate, so I was a step ahead of the game. After a quick Google search, I found that the crypto of choice in the NFT world is Wrapped Ethereum (wETH), which is basically the tradable version of Ethereum (ETH).

To convert ETH into wETH, you need an Ethereum Wallet, so I downloaded that. Then, you can link your Ethereum Wallet to OpenSea, which is like eBay for crypto assets. Soon, I hit my first snag: to convert ETH to wETH, you need to pay a “miner fee,” which apparently is higher when there are more people using the blockchain. This fee was about $8.