Thread by @punk6529

1/ On buying your first NFT

6529 has a lot of new followers and (so far) has DMs open and receives a lot of DMs asking "Hi 6529, I am new, which NFT should I buy"

So rather than trying to answer this 1-on-1, I am posting this for future reference

2/ First, the disclaimer. 6529 will never ever ever tell you which NFT to buy.

6529 will not tell you if "a collection is good" or "if this NFT is rare" or "if this NFT will go up value"

3/ Related, 6529 does not want you to buy an NFT, does not care if you buy an NFT and does absolutely not want you to FOMO into buying an NFT that you later regret.

Stay cool. We are not going to run out of JPGs

4/ Now, let's come to you and why you are here?

If you are a 'civilian' with a normal life budget and you have not historically been a) buying art or b) successfully trading crypto, then you need to forget about "investment gains" in NFTs

5/ In other words, if you are a civilian, you should consider any purchase of any NFT you make to be in your "entertainment" budget for the month, not your retirement portfolio.

Consider your spending as 'antiquing' or 'a night on the town' or 'weekend in LV'

6/ Or to put it differently (and this is advice I have to anyone buying crypto since 2013), if you buy any NFT, you should immediately mark it down to $0 on your balance sheet.

Assume it is (economically) worthless and illiquid.

If that makes you queasy, you are overspending

7/ Ask yourself, why are you here? If it is to see the birth of a new approach to art, note that you do not need to spend a single penny.

You can see every NFT for free online. 6529 (and others) are building museums and you can see curated collections there too.

8/ Wait 6529, are you being disingenuous? Don't you buy NFTs that you hope will go up in value. Sure.

But I am following the rules above and my NFT (and crypto portfolio) is always firewalled from my IRL life.

If all NFTs go to zero, 6529 will live the exact same life

9/ I have the luxury that my IRL life does not require any crypto or NFT gainz to be pleasant at the consumption levels I choose to live at.

So I am here for other reasons, for ideological reasons, to fight for the open metaverse. 6529 is self-actualizing in the NFT space 😉

10/ So, you have read all that, you have accepted it and you still have some *entertainment* budget to buy an NFT. Which one should you buy?

The first NFT you should buy is a super cheap one to learn how NFTs work. This is what 6529 did.

11/ In other words, you should learn how to use your ETH wallet, how to use OpenSea, how to buy and transfer an NFT with "play money".

There are NFTs for 0.01 to 0.03 ETH. Find one that looks cool to you and buy it.

Ask yourself how you feel owning it? Better? Worse?

12/ Show it to your family. Put it up in an @oncyber_io gallery.

Are we having fun? Then proceed to next step. Are we not having fun? Then chill out. There is no need to buy an NFT. Just hang out and wait

13/ The next question is what is your budget. If it is more than +/- $10,000, then your next step is to buy a Trezor or Ledger to keep your NFTs safe.

Software wallets w/o a hardware device are NOT SAFE

If $200 for a Trezor makes you queasy, then reevaluate your spending.

14/ Discord and to some degree twitter is/are full of scammers.

They DM you, they pose as customer support, they sent you phishing links, they ask you for your seed phrase.

Never give your seed phrase to anyone! Careful on links DMed to you from anons too.

15/ OK, so you have:

a) gotten a hardware wallet,
b) done a test transaction,
c) accepted that NFTs are not going to fund your retirement but are an entertainment expense, how do you think about/find/buy your NFTs

16/ The largest NFT marketplace is @opensea. You can find everything there, but it is also vast.

@SuperRare, @withFND, @KnownOrigin_io and @rarible are other marketplaces, usually but not always, at higher price points.

17/ The first job is to just browse, browse, browse to learn what you like and to understand the various aesthetics at play.

You should follow people on twitter. The people I follow is good coverage of the NFT universe.

18/ A lot of people I follow on twitter are pros/whales in NFT world.

Some of them are successful traders/flippers, some of them have balance sheets that strike fear even into 6529's heart.

Don't get FOMOed by my feed. It is a 'pro' feed

19/ The main categories of NFTs today (outside of gaming) are:
- PFPs (Profile pictures) such as punks, apes, cats and more
- Generative Art (like @artblocks_io and others)
- 1/1s from artists
- Photography (emerging)

20/ 6529 has no view whatsoever on which of these are of interest to you. 6529 collects across the board but most heavily in generative art, but that is a purely personal decision.

Most projects have discord servers - join them and see if you think the community is for you.

21/ So you have surveyed the landscape, found something that you like, found a community that you like and want to purchase within a certain area.

How to think about the purchase?

22/ The first framework is if you are buying "at the floor" (lowest prices in collection), at the ceiling/grail (most expensive) or in the middle.

Most people start at the floor and this is probably right for the reasons in the next tweet

22/
Floor
+: Market price is known, most liquid to exit if needed
- : Most competitive so gets relatively priced up

Mid/Upper:
+: usually less competitive (fewer buyers)
-: less liquid, market price is more subjective

23/ How is market price set between the floor and the ceiling?

Some mix of aesthetics and rarity in most collections. The first is subjective, the second is semi-objective. There are many ways to calculate rarity and pure statistical rarity is often wrong.

24/ I think it is fair to say if you don't understand the algorithm of the rarity and why you think you are buying a "rare" trait, then you probably should not be buying that piece.

Also, are you speculating anon? We said we are here for entertainment

25/ I think for most people the first non-test purchase should be in a collection they like, a piece that they like, at and near the floor.

And then they should hang out and wait to see how they feel owning it before deciding to buy more

26/ The final classic advice which is 100% true is

"Buy art that you like"

The number of JPGs you can buy will exceed your budget by a factor of infinity (true for 6529 also). So there is no reason to ever buy JPGs you don't like.

27/ If you buy NFTs that you like and you are operating out of your 'entertainment' budget (and immediately write them down to $0 on your balance sheet), then you can't lose in NFTs.

You will enjoy seeing your NFT online, in a gallery, on a Frame TV in your house

🤝

28/ I am also asked by some IRL or crypto whales which NFTs they should buy.

That is a different thread, for a different day, as they have different life parameters.

This thread is for the civilians.

29/ To conclude:
a) The art is free around here - you don't have to buy an NFT to enjoy it!
b) Take your time, there is no rush
c) Spend out of your entertainment budget
d) Buy what you like
e) Use a hardware wallet

🙏🙏🙏

30/ The rest of my threads I consider interesting can be found here

https://twitter.com/punk6529/status/1429399888786333697

31/ Update -> at least 30 people have DMed since this thread went live to ask me "which NFTs to buy"

And I think most of them were asking unironically

😂😂😂