Technology brings new opportunities. And every few years, there comes a new thing, which is hyped up so much that it is believed that it will change everything. After cryptocurrency, we got a new thing. Something that many thought to be an unstable bubble – about to pop any second; while others think of it as the future. Say hello to NFT.
What is an NFT?
The most typical way to describe something is to tell what it is abbreviated for and start writing its Wikipedia definition. Let’s go about it from a different angle. Think of a painting of Picasso. Its originality and uniqueness are determined by being the only one handmade by Picasso. And no matter how many scans or copies of it are made, nothing comes close to the real deal. A Non Fungible Token or NFT is something similar, only digital.
If you own an NFT, it means that you possess the copyrights and exclusive ownership of a digital piece of art. The art could be a painting, a video clip, a picture - anything in digital form. While there have been many opinions regarding NFTs and their future, one thing is for sure – They are here, and they are not going anywhere soon. So why not learn what all the fuss is about.
How are NFTs Unique, and How do they work?
Ok, so let’s spread out what we know so far. NFT is a digital art that’s unique. Non-fungible implies that it cannot be replaced with something else. And although it may seem very different from cryptocurrency, both of them work on the same technology – Blockchain. Most of the NFTs work on the Ethereum Blockchain. Ethereum is also a cryptocurrency like the famous Bitcoin.
How did the NFTs become so popular?
Well, like crypto, NFTs have also been here for a long. The oldest trace of which can be dated to 2014. However, it wasn’t until 2017 when Cryptokitties and Cryptopunks came into the spotlight, that many people knew about NFTs. But still, the giant famous NFT bomb went off in 2021 when Beeple sold his NFT at Christie’s for a whopping sum of 69 million dollars. This was the breakthrough that shook the globe, and then NFTs became the talk of the town. And since then, people have been making, buying, and selling NFTs and making more money than people do in months.
Should I also buy an NFT?
Well, to be fair, this is a really subjective question. It depends on you. NFT is still a volatile market, and if you want to invest, you need to consider the risks too. What if the market price drops? Or What if the NFT you bought is not selling again?
If you have money that you can risk, NFTs are indeed a place to try. But you cannot just go barging in, throwing your money all around, and buying whatever NFT grabs your attention first. You should have a working knowledge of how everything works. What a blockchain is. The history of the NFT you want to buy. Its previous price history and the artist who made the NFT.
To put a long story short, NFTs indeed is an investment opportunity. However, you should also look at the potential risks while investing your hard-earned money. NFTs will appeal differently to you depending upon who you are, whether an artist, a collector, or an investor. And thus, these non-fungible tokens may or may not make sense to you.
What if you decided to buy NFT?
Well, one thing is for sure, your experience with NFTs will be worthwhile, whether it is creating one from scratch and then getting lucky and selling it for millions of dollars, to buying a famous NFT during a dip in the market and selling it later on for a butt load of money.
How can knowledge, a.k.a Data affect my decision-making of NFT?
As mentioned earlier, knowledge of the market trends is of enormous importance when it comes to the decision of purchasing or selling an NFT. Thus, we are sure of the role of data collection in this climactic marketplace. Although tracking market trends seems like it might involve looking at a graph or something once or twice a day, it's way more complicated.
Once you have created your wallet and are on the NFT platform, the real game begins. At first, everything will seem random to you, and you would think that any of these NFTs could be one selling for millions of dollars, but as you scan through, you will find out that some categories are priced higher, and even some pieces within the same class might be priced really differently.
Keeping track of all this ever-changing data is not easy to do yourself because there are many NFTs that are being listed and sold each minute. That's where automation comes in, and web scrapers like ScrapingAnt truly prove their worth. Using web scrapers like this will provide you the chance to collect and analyze a ton of important data that would tell you a lot about market trends and how the market is changing.
How will a web scraper achieve data collection for NFT?
ScrapingAnt web scraping API or any other web scraper will collect a massive amount of data like the total volume of sales, changes in the price of an NFT, and the traffic on big marketplaces of NFT, which may give an insight into people's behavior towards NFTs and much more. What they do is scrape big marketplaces OpenSea, Rarible and look for information and availability of NFTs. Thus, you can compare prices because sometimes an NFT is lifted at different marketplaces, and you may find a difference in prices, see the average sale price of related NFTs and decide how much your precious NFT should sell for.
So, what are you thinking?
NFTs are indeed a unique thing like never before, and owning an original piece of digital art by Beeple or some other famous artist that you have exclusive rights to feels like a fantasy.
However, whether they would prove beneficial for you is a separate debate. And if you do decide to step into this busy market, you should have all the right tools to make sure you succeed. And in this data-driven world, using data collection techniques like custom web scraper from ScrapingAnt and analyzing such data to decide when and in which NFT to invest is the sanest thing to do.
Further reading
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