One of the ways to purchase an NFT is by minting it, here’s what that means.

When a project launches it’s NFT collection (think, releases it to the world), the easiest comparison for those with a little investment knowledge would be when a company’s IPO goes public making their stock tradable through an exchange. You can buy shares of the company, in this case the NFT project, by purchasing one or many of the NFTs available to mint. 

Here at Noob2NFTS, I love to say, think of NFTs as stocks, but with pictures. 😉

To mint an NFT is to purchase it at it’s initial release (or launch). Typically, a project’s website will set up a page dedicated specifically to minting their NFTs and release it at an exact time and date. Once the minting page becomes available you can connect your (MetaMask, Phantom or Nami) wallet to the website to purchase your NFT(s). Which wallet you use will depend on which Blockchain you are buying the NFT on. For example, if the NFT is being sold at .05 ETH you would know it’s on the Ethereum blockchain and would connect a MetaMask wallet to purchase (mint) the NFT. Some projects allow you to only mint one NFT at a time, others allow for unlimited minting, while yet still others will set a limited amount a single wallet may purchase.

The gamble here is that you have no idea which NFT you will receive as they are minted at random. So, you might only be able to mint average or basic NFTs from the collection, but on the other hand, the possibility of getting a rare NFT for cheap is much higher during a project’s minting, because after the NFTs are revealed, people discover the rarity of their NFTs and price them accordingly on the secondary market.

Once a project has minted the entirety of their collection it is then listed as sold out and the only way to purchase them is through secondary market websites. OpenSea.io, Magiceden.io, and cNFT.io are all secondary markets where you can purchase NFTs after they have finished minting. On these sites you can again connect the wallet that aligns with the crypto used to mint and purchase the NFTs you want.

How much does it cost to mint an NFT? Well, that depends on the project and everyone sets their prices differently.  I have personally paid as little as $50 USD to mint an NFT and as much as several hundred.

Another thing to consider is that with some projects minting can take minutes to sell out while others may take months or never at all. The project’s marketing strategy and popularity will have a big impact on how fast it mints all it’s NFTs. A project, let’s say, with unknown developers and little social media presence and average art could possible take months to sell out or even fail to do so. On the other hand, if a reputable set of devs collaborate with a popular artist who creates fun and interesting art pieces while also being super active on social media and has a celeb or two endorsing their project, then it could take only minutes for all of said project to mint.

Now that you know how to mint an NFT, and a little about what all goes into it, you should be able to do so easily and with confidence, but remember, if you aren’t able to mint a project that you like you can always go over to the secondary market to purchase them (check out Noob2NFTs How Do I Buy an NFT? for more on buying NFTs off the secondary market!) Sometimes NFTs on the secondary market might be more expensive, but often times not. Most projects list below mint price after selling out, but there are exceptions. Really big and popular projects can cost way more than their mint price seconds after they are purchased, but if you like the project and want to be a part of their community or simply just like the art, the price tag may not matter to you. Happy minting, Noobs!