NFT Christmas Shopping! Gift Ideas and How to Buy on Tezos Marketplaces

The Holiday season is upon us. This means cosy family gatherings, delicious food, the warmth of a fireplace - but also the anxiety of coming up with gift ideas and shopping in time. And what is it they say about the best presents? Something that a person may not buy for themselves? Not anything that leads to too much hassle or takes up too much space? Even, say, a gift that may keep on giving? You’re already thinking it, we know it. NFTs will make the perfect gift this season, and we’re here to help you out.

This is a guide to getting your loved ones a piece by their favourite artist, some one-of-a-kind generative art, a present so niche that it will hit all the right notes and show that you put in the effort. So let’s get to the how and what of buying NFTs, all while staying green on the Proof-of-Stake Tezos platforms fxhash and objkt.com - in 3 simple steps from scratch to Saturday morning under the tree.

1. Getting the coins to buy your art: tez

The very first step to buying any crypto currency is setting up an account on a decentralised exchange platform. For the sake of simplicity, in this case we’ll be using Coinbase since it is the most popular one. However, feel free to do some of your own research into any decentralised exchanges - as long as it supports Tezos!

So after you have signed up here, the next step is to add a ‘normal’ FIAT currency to your balance by clicking on the blue ‘Buy/Sell’ button in the top right corner.

Once you have added your dollars, pounds or euros you can easily convert it into any crypto of your choosing. To know how much money you should be adding to your balance it may be wise tp keep in mind your budget for the gift, and compare with the current exchange rates here. As we are working with Tezos, fortunately gas fees should not be minor and not very much of a concern!

2. Setting up your Tezos wallet

Next, you will need the wallet from which you will be doing your Christmas shopping. When you go to the website of fxhash or obkjt.com, there is a little button in the top right corner that says ‘sync’.

Once you click on this, the platforms will give you several wallet options that, naturally, all support Tezos. While all are good, for this example we will use one of the most common ones: Kukai. So after hitting ‘sync’ opt for Kukai, and it will redirect you towards the Kukai website, where you will get the option of ‘signing in’ with a number of your existing social media accounts. Perhaps the simplest is just to click on your Google account, and you’ll be immediately redirected to your new Kukai wallet.

All that’s left is for you to send your tez to your wallet. You’ll do this by copying your wallet address (a long series of numbers and letters) by clicking the ‘copy’ sign in the top right corner. Now, go back to your coinbase and hit ‘Send/Receive’, again in the top right. Paste your wallet address, send away tez (maybe double-check you copy-pasted the right address) and you’re all set!

3. Time for a shopping spree

Now it’s finally time to flash those coins. Head back to fxhash or objkt.com and make sure your wallet is ‘synced’. Sync refers to the process of connecting your Tezos wallet (in our example Kukai) to the platform. This enables you to buy, sell and set up a profile. Typically the button is located in the top right corner and prompts your Kukai wallet for confirmation.and get lost in the feeds and explore pages. All set? Time to splurge!

If you already had an artist in mind - maybe take a look at what pieces they themselves have in their collections for more inspo? Or, if you exist in the NFT-Twitter realms, dive into endless scrolls through profiles to find the perfect work?

This really is the most exciting part of collecting NFTs, so we encourage you to have fun and think outside the box. Look at what pieces make your heart beat faster, what projects may have been overlooked, their elegance lying in hidden intricacy - never forget that discovery is part of the experience.

But in the eventuality you’d still like some pointer as to what you could buy, we’ll be so gracious as to share some of the pieces we have our eye on this month. Or take a look at some of our favourites in the past months on our blog!

First off, Geoff Sterns’ collection ‘Wiggle’ is a groovy and mesmerizing series that “explores repetition using simple sine waves.” Consisting of 15 possible color palettes, each mint is unique with “wave amplitude, complexity, and size are all variable.”

Next up, Artists Daniel Oropeza and Sky Goodman collaborated together on a collection of the highest glitchiest order. Oropeza shared a sneak-peek on Twitter just yesterday, the thumbnail looking an appropriate Grinch-green.

And last but not least: we are still obsessed with the illustrations by Liffi Wongso, who we did a Tweeterview with a couple of weeks ago. Her piece ‘Little Ribon’, for example, is a sweet portrait perfect for Christmas.

3. Turning your NFT into a gift

And last but absolutely not least: don’t forget to give your digital gem a physical manifestation! This is another opportunity to have fun and come up with creative ways of presenting your gift. Are you going to get a (high-quality) print of the work? Frame it? Or perhaps you’ll take a different path, print and decorate a QR to keep some mystery in the process of unwrapping? Another option is to subtly find out the wallet address of the gift’s intended recipient and send the NFT to them directly early Christmas morn’, accompanied by a heart-felt card under the tree.

However you choose to gift, know that you have picked a present that could not be more apt for Christmas 2021 - the year that NFTs broke through. A beautiful piece of art as well as the capturing of a moment in time and space, a sign of its times customized towards your personal act of gift-giving. The message is clear: gift NFTs this Christmas!

Covery by Geoff Sterns, Wiggle #6, 2021