irst off — Welcome to what is a new world that is constantly changing and evolving. Getting into crypto and especially NFTs is a different type of experience unlike traditional financial markets.

Here… we don’t get sleep, we forget to eat, and everybody else is normies and they’re ngmi (not gonna make it — crypto talk… spend 2 days here and you’ll find out)… kidding… we’re mostly normal or we pretend to be at least. Oh, what a journey you are about to be on.

So, in this article we want to break down for you virtually step-by-step how to purchase your first NFT. LFG!! (what? again, you should really be on Twitter if you’re gonna be here)…

1. You are going to need to some cryptocurrency (most often). So you will have to find an exchange that allows users from your country. If you are in the US this will be an exchange such as Coinbase, Binance US, Gemini, Kraken, or FTX.us. If outside of the US you have almost unlimited options including the most popular that are Binance.com, FTX.com, Crypto.com, Bittrex, Kucoin, etc. We personally like Coinbase, Binance, and FTX for their simple to use interfaces.
2. Create your account on one of those sites, complete identification requirements, link your debit card or bank account and deposit your fiat currency. It should be rather simple — there are usually big buttons that say BUY, SELL, DEPOSIT, etc.
3. Once you have this done you will have to purchase a crypto that allows you to purchase an NFT on a primary or secondary marketplace. At the current time the most popular blockchains for such are Solana and Ethereum so you will need SOL or ETH tokens in whatever amount of USD you wish to spend on NFTs. (btw primary market means the website for the issuer of the token/NFT while secondary means a secondary market where they are resold such as Solanart, Digital Eyes, OpenSea, etc.)
4. So now you have cryptocurrencies you are ready to buy NFTs with. You will need to transfer these tokens to a web3 compatible wallet. Since we (@belugiesNFT) are on Solana the most trusted, secure, and widely used recommendation we have for you is to download Phantom wallet and use it to deposit, store, mint, purchase, and sell NFTs with.
5. Here is a guide we wrote on setting up Phantom wallet to purchase NFTs: https://medium.com/@belugies/how-to-setup-deposit-funds-into-phantom-wallet-e565afd47171
6. Here is another guide we wrote on using Phantom wallet to connect to a website to mint and or purchase NFTs from a secondary market: https://medium.com/@belugies/how-to-use-solana-to-purchase-an-nft-f02f20ffa26b
7. These guides above are pretty simple and you can actually use the same steps for buying an NFT on Ethereum. The difference is that the web3 crypto wallet you will use is Metamask and the best market place for purchasing NFTs that are built on top of Ethereum is undisputedly Opensea.io.
8. The top marketplaces on Solana right now are: digitaleyes.market, solanart.io, solsea.io, and magiceden.io.
9. If you are not minting directly from a primary market then the steps above in the guide “How to use Solana to purchase an NFT” are pretty much the same except instead of clicking “mint” on a primary market website you will go to 1 of the 4 aforementioned market places and find a project you like (of course vet them first by using Twitter, their website, visiting their discord, etc) and filter through their collection and purchase the NFT that you really like.

Never, ever speculate with money that you need to live on. Always accept there is a risk for ultimate loss when you are doing anything that requires capital to get started.

None of this is financial advice it’s just us trying to help newcomers navigate the space better and for when your friends say “yo help me to buy this NFT” you can simply direct them to this article and sleep sound knowing they’re gmi (gonna make it) in no time!