The community for digital art enthusiasts keeps growing and growing. On social media platforms such as Twitter and Reddit, thousands of investors, artists, and developers support each other’s projects. This proves that NFTs are becoming a new space where artists meet their purpose and investors grow their money. NFTs are also a good space to venture into apart from investing and trading cryptocurrencies.
Last year, we exposed the best NFT airdrops to watch out for before 2021 ended. If you’ve followed our tips and checked the rising stars in the NFT market, you could have made good profits. Now that 2022 has just started, it’s never too late to buy your first or additional digital art to add to your collection. Here are some top NFTs where you can invest your extra money this year.
The Most Popular NFTs Until Now
1. Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)
The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) never gets old for new and existing investors. Who would have missed this NFT collection when a lot of famous personalities, including Khaled, Jimmy Fallon, and Logan Paul, invested in it?
The collection was launched in April 2021 with 10,000 unique apes. After the launch, the price of the collection went up fast. So far, the most expensive ape sold was worth 769 ETH or $2.3 million equivalent.
The owners of BAYC have perks and privileges, including access to private concerts held within its ecosystem.
2. Meebits
Introduced last May 2021, Meebits is a collection of 20,000 unique pixelated avatars that can be used in the digital world. Some famous online personalities who own Meebits are Soby—a famous crypto influencer on Twitter, and Shawn Yue Man-Lok—an actor from Hong Kong.
The rarer the Meebits are, the more expensive they get as time passes. Today, the average price of this collection is around US$14,700. The rarest ones can go up to 100 ETHs.
3. Crypto Punks
With BAYC and Meebits, Crypto Punks is among the most popular NFT collections. This project was launched earlier than the first two mentioned, in 2017. The collection is also composed of 10,000 unique avatars composed of punks. Some are aliens, zombies, and apes.
The collection also comes with unique background colours that adapt to the status of the items. For example, the background colour is red when the NFT is for sale. When it’s for auction, the colour is purple. You will also see a blue background when the NFT is not for sale. Cool, isn’t it?
4. Decentraland
If there’s any place in the virtual world where you can build your real estate empire, would you invest in it? For many investors, Decentraland is one of the fascinating NFT projects as it doesn’t just offer one collection but a whole new world of digital assets.
Built on the Ethereum blockchain, Decentraland offers virtual real estate and digital avatars on top of many unique items. Owners in this virtual world can build homes once they have their land. They can also trade collectables with other owners in space.
Because of the new experience and value, this project brings to the NFT community, plots of land are quite expensive. In 2021, some of the digital real estate properties sold here amounted to US$15.53 million.
5. Axie Infinity
There are tons of NFTs out there, not just JPEGs. In 2018, Axie Infinity was launched, one of the first play-to-earn games on the blockchain. The game became more popular in 2021 when more Asian countries joined the bandwagon of Axie owners and players.
About 40% of the players earn a lot in the Philippines alone. A news report that a 22-year-old Filipino player had already bought two homes with his money from playing the games.
The Axie Infinity game requires the players to own three unique axie NFTs to play and earn SLPs, which can be sold and exchanged with fiat currencies. The highest cost of an Axie ever sold was 250 ETH, or around US$820,000.
#WomeninNFTs Recent Projects
The NFT space has become a place of advocates and support. A woman or not, you can own an NFT offered by women artists. Some recent popular collections are tagged as #WomeninNFTs on social media platforms like Facebook. Here are some of the collections you might be interested in.
1. Alpha Girl Club
Launched in December 2021, Alpha Girl Club is a good NFT collection to watch out for as they promote and support women in the NFT space. Aside from being an artist, this collection promotes mental health among its members or owners. The club hosts weekly Twitter space events; most of the things they talk about are our mental health and wellness. Currently, AGC has 23.6K followers on Twitter.
2. Women Rise
Women Rise was founded by an artist and book author Maliha Abidi in September 2021. It’s a collection of 10,000 randomly generated unique women NFTs. The goal of this collection is to emphasise women in characters. A portion of the funds generated from the initial sale will be given to groups or charities that support gender equality, education for girls, and mental health in marginalised areas. Right now, Women Rise has 23.2K followers on their Twitter handle.
There are a lot more rising and upcoming NFTs for women. You might want to follow #WomeninNFT on Twitter to know more.
The Rising Stars
The year 2022 is indeed a good start for NFT enthusiasts. Several collections have boomed at the start of the year, providing more income opportunities for investors. The following NFT collections are worth watching out for this year.
1. Doodles
Doodles is an NFT collection composed of 10,000 unique doodle characters. As of this year, the collection ranks third in the weekly volume released by OpenSea, following Bored Apes Yacht Club and Phantabear. What makes Doodles unique is that its art is inclusive. It uses paster colours on its items. There are also rare pieces in the collection. Some have rainbow hair and notes on the face of the characters. Right now, Doodles has more than 166k followers on Twitter.
2. PhantaBear
Ranked as the second NFT collection in terms of weekly volume, following Bored Ape Yacht Club, Phantabear is a collection of 10k bear items that provide access to Ezek Club. There are currently 5.3k owners based on its OpenSea page, and the items have been traded already at 26.1k volume.
3. CryptoMories
If you want a more creative collection, you might want to check our CryptoMories. This collection is composed of 10k rare little skeletons. The very concept of these NFTs is to remind people that life is short. On its OpenSea page, CryptoMories highlighted the Latin phrase “memento mori,” which means “remember you die.” Currently, the collection has 34.7k followers on Twitter.
Tips To Consider While Choosing Your NFT Collection
Do your research.
2022 is all about becoming aware of the NFT projects that have the potential to grow in the future. If you have money to spare, invest in good projects. Selecting the right project for you might be as easy as you think. Some investors struggle to flip their NFTs because they bought the wrong items. To avoid this from happening to you, DYOR—do your research. An NFT is cheap doesn’t mean it’s a good investment. Check the artists behind the collection. Do they have a good foundation and a strong community? Projects likely to boom are those with solid purpose aside from being just “art.”
Start small.
There are plenty of good options in the NFT market. However, not a lot of them are affordable, especially for beginners in the NFT world. If you’re beginning, you can always start small. You can gradually increase your investment depending on your budget and risk appetite. Buy one NFT today. Then, buy another next month if your budget can keep up. Suppose you aim to profit from your NFT trades. Learn when to sell.
The rarer the NFT, the more expensive it gets.
For budget investors, choose a rare NFT collection where you can put your money in. NFT is about being rare and unique. Money will flow if you keep those items that are hard to find in the marketplace. Don’t worry about the money. Once you buy an expensive NFT from a good collection, its price will increase.
Final Thoughts
The NFT space is a good place to explore, regardless of whether you have experience in it or not. Aside from the tips we mentioned above, it’s also good to note that a strong community is essential. The stronger the community is, the more you can find people who share the same sentiments as you, and eventually, you will find the right group that can lead you to good projects.
