Buying and Selling NFTs on Nifty Gateway

Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster founded Nifty Gateway in 2018. It was later on acquired by other famous brothers, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss. The online digital auction platform is a marketplace that allows you to buy and sell Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) or Nifties. NFT is a digital asset based on the Ethereum blockchain. NFTs are unique pieces that are irreplaceable (non-fungible). The asset may vary from digital images to video clips, depending on the creator of the piece.

Table of Contents

How did the idea emerge?

The Cock Foster Twins were not excited about the financial side of things at first, though when they discovered NFTs, they found the use case for crypto they were looking for. Furthermore, since there weren’t many NFT companies to work for, they decided to start their own project.

Their involvement of Winklevoss twins helped turn Nifty Gateway into the hub for digital art. Winklevoss twin brothers are some of the first investors in Bitcoin when it came to the market. They purchased millions of dollars of BTC when other investors were afraid to invest in it. After dabbling in startups, they subsequently started the Gemini. Gemini is a cryptocurrency exchange platform. It is a New York trust company with no foreseeable IPO and therefore no stocks or shares price. Nifty Gateway has sold NFTs by Beeple, Grimes, LOGIK, and other famous NFT artists.

“Nifties” stands for “NFTs,” which stands for “non-fungible tokens.

“If you critically rate what makes art valuable as an asset, which is authenticity, liquidity, and longevity, then nifties blow traditional art out of the water in all three of those categories.” – Duncan Cock Foster said.
NY Magazine, MAR. 4, 2020

Nifty Gateway has managed to facilitate digital art drops in the same way the Supreme fashion brand does. The Supreme style of art drop is a great way to create excitement. The only downside is the technical issues that pop up from wild traffic swings that can spike 100x when the drop kicks off. When an artist sells a piece of work on Nifty Gateway, they get to determine what percentage they want from future sales. This feature is one of the main reasons why creators tend to choose Nifty Gateway.

Minting (gas) fees

When it comes to creating an NFT, one thing you should have in mind is that the platform is charging you with the minting fees. Nifty Gateway is charging 5% of the sale price in fees and taxes.

Purchasing NFTs and Nifties

Just like any other marketplace, if you want to purchase some NFTs or Nifties for that matter, you need to create an account and you have to own a digital wallet. You can purchase some Ethereum with your debit/credit card or exchange crypto into your wallet. After finalizing account creation and connecting your digital wallet to the site, you can find the Nifty you would like to purchase and click on the “place a bid.”

The Good and the Bad

One of the Pros of the Nifty Gateway is that the marketplace is reserved for music curated by its team. This platform has a very sophisticated artwork aesthetic, one of the main reasons for this is that the NFTs on the platform are created by exclusive artists and are collector’s items.

Another one of the biggest pros is its exclusivity. The platform has been quite popular among musicians since famous musicians like Deadmau5, Gramatik, Carl Cox, Lil Yachty, etc. have dropped their NFTs, which ended up earning them thousands of dollars.

On the other hand, this platform is notorious for its recent hacking history. Some users reported account hacks, with nifties worth thousands of dollars stolen. The main reason for this is believed to be the absence of two-factor authorization (which Nifty Gateway already fixed).

Nifty Gateway 2.0 launched with new features, which include services that tapped Google and Facebook’s APIs. Also, one of the downsides of Nifty Gateway is that fees are not necessarily fully transparent. Users have complained that ‘gas fees’ can quickly rack up.