How to Buy a Beeple NFT
You heard about this Beeple thing, that someone paid [insert figure in millions here after Christie’s auction closes, $13,250,000 at time of writing] for a JPEG.
NFTs, love them or hate them, understand them or don’t, I’m not here to discuss that whatsoever, or even explain what they are; I’m here to answer a frequently searched question.
All I’m gonna tell you here is how to buy one.
Not suggesting you should, and this is not financial advice or an endorsement.
If you have no experience with any of this NFT or crypto stuff and just wanna use a credit card
So you don’t have any crypto, don’t have a wallet, have never done an ETH transaction, never heard of Metamask, you just want one of these and you want to pay with regular money.
Then your spot is going to be Nifty Gateway.
It’s the closest thing to a regular e-commerce store. It’s a Buy Now button and then they’ll store it for you so you don’t need to figure out how to set up a wallet if you don’t want to.
In order from oldest to newest:
I have only included the ones that have a list price.
You can also create an account and make a Global Offer of a flat price, and an owner may accept your offer, but for simplicity I am only gearing this section for folks with a credit card and a pile of money who want to get one instantly without negotiating or learning how to be Nifty-Gateway-savvy.
Very important: if you do buy one, make sure you turn on Two Factor Authentication to protect your account. You can find it in Settings after you create an account.
The other marketplace that has a Beeple drop is Makersplace
Here’s a link to the latest drop, the 5000 DAY SELECTS on Makersplace.
However, the only way to get your hands on one there is going to involve making an offer to a current owner, and making that offer in ETH, even though you can checkout with a card.
Click on the “Edition History” tab about halfway down, and you’ll see a list of all 105 editions from this drop with a few listed prices and lots of “Make Offer” buttons. You’ll have to pick through them and see which ones might have the lowest offers and try to beat those — maybe the current owner will accept.
The more complicated option that involves using crypto, a wallet, and is riskier
Some folks who bought Beeples withdrew them from Nifty Gateway and Makersplace and have them stored in a wallet and/or listed on OpenSea, which is kind of a free-for-all NFT marketplace. No credit cards here, buying in ETH only.
Navigating OpenSea is going to involve knowledge of crypto, wallets, and contract addresses to confirm that something that looks like a Beeple actually is one.
This article is not for folks who know how to do that and you are more likely to get in trouble, so I’m not going to attempt to explain how to do this. I’m not recommending that anyone who Googled “how to buy beeple” attempt this route.
One last option for those who don’t have $188k minimum to spend
Truth be told, 99.99% of people can’t afford a Beeple right now — not unless he does another $1 drop like he has twice before. The ones on Makersplace were originally $1 and part of a drawing, and $1 drops were included in the Nifty Gateway ones as well.
But you can spend (not gonna say “invest” because that’s not accurate) as little as around $30 to buy B.20 tokens, which are a kind of fractional ownership of an account that holds 20 Beeple artworks. So if they go up in value, your tokens go up in value. It’s like buying a tiny piece of a Beeple.
You can check that out here. I am not recommending or endorsing this — it’s just a thing that exists.
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I talk about NFTs sometimes on Twitter so consider following me.
And if you want to try making money selling your own NFTs, please reach out by DMing me on Twitter — I have identified the factors that make for a successful NFT drop and have helped others already.
