I bought NFTs so you don't have to

Oh noooo. Chris, are you okay?

Yes, I'm perfectly fine! I'm sure you've probably heard a bunch about NFTs. I considered myself familiar with them, how they worked and what their purpose was but thought a better way to learn would be to do the thing and buy some.

Okay, so what are NFTs?

Great question. In its simplest terms, a non-fungible token (NFT) represents a unique digital asset. Buying one tells the world "hey, I own this." I know I know. Weird 💪, but okay.

Do you actually own the asset? Kinda. What kind of assets can you own? Ah, it depends. A full explainer is coming soon to the blog but here's what I did to buy the NFTs at the end of the email.

Decide on a blockchain. A blockchain will determine the protocol, cryptocurrency, and marketplace you need to use to purchase your NFT. Ethereum is the most popular one but the transaction fees (also known as gas) are pretty high.

I chose Solana because of the lower transaction fees.

Purchase some Solana ($SOL). You can purchase Solana on many cryptocurrency exchanges. I prefer Coinbase Pro because the transaction fees to purchase are much lower.

For this example, I purchased $30 worth of $SOL. Coinbase Pro charged me $0.18 to purchase whereas the regular Coinbase exchange would have charged me $1.99.

Move your $SOL to a crypto wallet. While Coinbase Pro is a great place to purchase cryptocurrency, it's not the best place to hold your crypto if you plan on transacting with it. I created a Phantom wallet within my browser. It was quick and easy to set it up. Once I was settled, I withdrew my $SOL from Coinbase Pro and sent it to my Phantom wallet address.

Choose an NFT marketplace. There are various marketplaces but I settled on Magic Eden after watching Network Chuck's video on gifting his family NFTs. Magic Eden has affordable NFTs so I didn't have to worry about spending too much on this experiment.

Buy your NFT. This is where it takes some time. I wasn't trying to spend too much money like the person who bought Beeple's NFT for $69 MILLION DOLLARS. I just searched the marketplace for things I like: shapes, cats, soccer, and baby Yoda. Believe it or not, I found some NFTs.

Share your new ✨art✨. Honestly, this is the part where NFTs start to fall apart, at least in my opinion. I bought 4 NFTs. No one else can claim ownership of them and if someone does... well, I don't know what I can do. I can point them to the record on the Solana blockchain that says I own an NFT, but what's that going to do? 🤷‍♂️

In any case, say hello to the NFTeam.

Taking a step back, I can see practical applications of NFTs but many of them are still tied to physical objects. Concert tickets, trading cards, real estate... imagine having a public record that says you own a very rare concert ticket, trading card or music album. Imagine how much easier buying/selling a house would be if you could transfer ownership of a house to someone else with a digital token and smart contract and without the overwhelming paperwork?

Not quite there yet, but those a just a few examples and I'm excited to see where this goes once we're over the "I own that jpg" phase.

Hope you enjoyed this little experiment of mine! It's my way of learning about these new technologies. Hopefully, you were able to learn something too! Or maybe you're just even more confused now. It's okay. I understand.

❤️ This weeks' favorite things

🍿 Turning Red on Disney+ is Pixar's latest film. It's a wonderful coming-of-age film about a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl living in Toronto in 2002. I really enjoyed it but watching it with Karla was even better because there are a ton of teenage girl moments I would not have understood on. Give it a watch. It's a good time :)  

📹 The video that inspired this entire journey. I imagine everyone reading this reaction like Network Chuck's partner.

🧠 The Second Brain Summit is happening next week and I'm pretty excited about it. Building a Second Brain is a concept coined by Tiago Forte consisting of creating systems and processes that help you manage information. It's basically building ways to get things out of your head and into an external system (paper, app, calendar, planner) so you can use your time and energy to process and act on information and not store it.

It aligns with my CHKP OS journey so I'm hoping to catch some sessions to learn more about how other people have done something similar.

That's it for this week. Thanks for reading!