How to buy and sell NFTs on Nifty Gateway

Non­fun­gi­ble token (NFT) mar­ket­places trans­act­ed rough­ly $82 mil­lion in 2020 and a stag­ger­ing $17.6 bil­lion in 2021, indi­cat­ing a ris­ing demand and high user inter­est in NFTs. This mete­oric rise of dig­i­tal asset trad­ing ranged from whim­si­cal car­toon JPEGs to Nation­al Bas­ket­ball Asso­ci­a­tion trad­ing cards, art­work, music and more. One such mar­ket­place for col­lect­ing and trad­ing NFTs is Nifty Gateway.

Nifty Gate­way was found­ed in 2018 by Dun­can Cock Fos­ter and Grif­fin Cock Fos­ter. In 2019, it was acquired by Tyler and Cameron Win­klevoss’ cryp­tocur­ren­cy exchange, Gem­i­ni. Nifty Gate­way posi­tions itself as a high-end NFT mar­ket­place on the Ethereum blockchain, part­ner­ing with top dig­i­tal artists, musi­cians, ath­letes and brands to cre­ate lim­it­ed-edi­tion exclu­sive launch­es. The plat­form has sold NFTs by Beeple, Pak, Refik Anadol, rap­per Lil Yachty and oth­er wide­ly fol­lowed NFT artists.

Dur­ing the NFT mar­ket peak between May 2020 and April 2021, Nifty Gate­way launched 6,623 NFTs rep­re­sent­ing the art­work of 418 artists with report­ed total sales of $403.8 mil­lion across its pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary marketplaces.

Relat­ed: NFT invest­ment: A beginner’s guide to the risks and returns of NFTs

What makes Nifty Gateway unique?

There are three things that make Nifty Gateway’s Ethereum-based NFT mar­ket­place stand out:

Curated and verified art

The artists launch­ing on the Nifty Gate­way NFT mar­ket­place are usu­al­ly well-rec­og­nized and acclaimed in the art com­mu­ni­ty. Many of them hold celebri­ty sta­tus in the cryp­to art com­mu­ni­ty, mak­ing their work ver­i­fi­able, legit­i­mate and expensive. 

Nifty Gate­way is selec­tive about who is per­mit­ted to dis­play their art­work on the plat­form. Pri­or to being per­mit­ted to mint and issue NFTs, artists must suc­cess­ful­ly com­plete an appli­ca­tion and inter­view process. In this aspect, Nifty Gate­way is akin to mod­ern-day art gal­leries that assem­ble, man­age and present ver­i­fied collections. 

Exclusive drops

NFT drops often refer to a cre­ator releas­ing a new lim­it­ed-edi­tion NFT or a full non­fun­gi­ble token col­lec­tion for sale. Col­lec­tors can pur­chase the dropped NFTs before they sell out. While many plat­forms do non­fun­gi­ble token air­drops, Nifty Gate­way is par­tic­u­lar­ly known for its exclu­sive art drops, which are lim­it­ed-edi­tion and in lim­it­ed quan­ti­ties, and they often sell out quick­ly due to high demand.

Nifty Gateway’s part­ner­ships with top artists, musi­cians and cre­ators aim to ensure that the drops are made exclu­sive­ly on its plat­form. This fos­ters Nifty Gateway’s brand exclusivity. 

In Feb­ru­ary 2021, Beeple launched his “Cross­roads” NFT and “Spring/Summer Col­lec­tion 2021” via an exclu­sive drop on Nifty Gate­way. “Cross­roads” was designed as a response to the 2020 Unit­ed States pres­i­den­tial elec­tion and sold for a whop­ping $6.6 mil­lion on Nifty Gateway. 

Fiat on-ramp accessibility

Nifty Gate­way sup­ports the U.S. dol­lar fiat cur­ren­cy for U.S. bank account hold­ers, allow­ing NFT pur­chas­es using deb­it and cred­it cards. This fea­ture is rare for NFT mar­ket­places since oth­ers such as OpenSea, Super­Rare and Blur are acces­si­ble through a Web3 wal­let.

Nifty Gate­way is a sub­sidiary of the Win­klevoss twins’ cryp­to exchange com­pa­ny, Gem­i­ni LLC. This allows it to be pow­ered by Gemini’s secure, insti­tu­tion­al-grade infra­struc­ture to explore var­i­ous cryp­to and fiat pay­ment meth­ods.

Relat­ed: Cryp­tocur­ren­cy on-ramps and off-ramps, explained

How to get started with Nifty Gateway

The fol­low­ing steps explain how to set up a Nifty Gate­way account: 

Step 1: Account sign up 

Sign up on Niftygateway.com/signup with a valid email and pass­word to get start­ed. Alter­na­tive­ly, the option of con­nect­ing via a Web3 wal­let is also available. 

Step 2: Fill in profile details

Once the account is cre­at­ed, it is advis­able to enter oth­er impor­tant infor­ma­tion to enhance the user expe­ri­ence. Upload­ing a pro­file pic­ture and tog­gling the pro­file icon to one’s lik­ing are a good place to start.

Step 3: Add a payment method

Three pay­ment options are avail­able to choose from: link­ing the account with a Gem­i­ni Wal­let, con­nect­ing with a Web3 dig­i­tal wal­let like Meta­Mask to con­firm trans­ac­tions or adding a cred­it or deb­it card.

How to buy NFTs on Nifty Gateway

The fol­low­ing steps will guide any­one inter­est­ed in buy­ing NFTs on Nifty Gateway:

• To pur­chase an NFT, vis­it the Nifty Gate­way marketplace. 
• Browse avail­able NFTs by artist, col­lec­tion or cat­e­go­ry. The search func­tion is also avail­able to find spe­cif­ic NFTs or collections. 
• Pick an NFT and buy it using your pre­ferred pay­ment method. The pur­chased NFT can be sent to your Meta­Mask wal­let or your Nifty Gate­way account. 

How to sell NFTs on Nifty Gateway

The steps on how to sell NFTs on Nifty Gate­way are list­ed below:

• To list an NFT for sale, go to the “My Col­lec­tion” tab on Nifty Gate­way and click on the “List an Item” button. 
• Enter basic infor­ma­tion about the NFT, such as its name, descrip­tion and price. 
• Users have two pay­ment method options for sell­ing NFTs: They can post them for sale direct­ly from their Meta­Mask wal­let for Ether (ETH), or they can sell them for U.S. dol­lars by sign­ing up to be an autho­rized sell­er using Stripe. When some­one pur­chas­es the list­ed NFT, the funds get trans­ferred to the linked wallet.

How to gift NFTs on Nifty Gateway

Gift­ing NFTs is one of the fea­tures offered by Nifty Gate­way, whose account hold­ers can send NFTs to oth­er users on the plat­form as gifts to any­one sim­ply via a valid email address. 

To send an NFT to a user on the platform:

1. Open the “My Col­lec­tion” tab and select the NFT you wish to send. 

2. A new page will appear. Click on “Send Nifty.” Enter the recipient’s user­name in the search box and select their pro­file (you can even add a per­son­al­ized note if needed).

3. Click “Send Nifty” to con­firm your trans­fer. The trans­fer is instant with no gas fees for with­in-plat­form transfers.

Apart from this, Nifty Gate­way also allows gift­ing NFTs to any­one not on the plat­form via a valid email address, as explained below:

• Find the NFT you want to send as a gift and make sure it’s avail­able for gift­ing. Some NFTs may not be giftable, so check before proceeding. 
• Upon select­ing the NFT to gift, click on the “Gift” but­ton. This will open a new page where you will need to enter the recipient’s email address (and add a per­son­al mes­sage if you want). 
• Next, choose whether to give the NFT imme­di­ate­ly or on a spe­cif­ic date. After select­ing the gift­ing option, review the details and click “Con­firm” to com­plete the trans­ac­tion. Ensure some funds to pay for trans­ac­tion costs. The recip­i­ent will receive an email noti­fi­ca­tion with instruc­tions on how to claim the gift­ed NFT.

Nifty Gateway fees structure and pricing 

Nifty Gate­way has a stan­dard fee sys­tem con­sist­ing of two dif­fer­ent mod­els: V1 and V2, as defined by Nifty’s Wal­letHub docs.

V1 method

This mod­el is for list­ings held in Nifty Gateway’s cus­to­di­al mod­el. With this approach, Nifty Gate­way takes a 5% cut of the sale price as a charge. Cred­it cards, Ethereum wal­lets or Gem­i­ni accounts can all be used to make the pay­ment. More­over, there are no gas fees asso­ci­at­ed with these transactions.

V2 method

This is applic­a­ble to any ven­dor that lists an NFT for sale using an Ethereum cryp­tocur­ren­cy wal­let like Meta­Mask. ETH must be used to pay for these trans­ac­tions, and Nifty Gate­way charges a 2.5% fee on the total sale price. Users must pay gas fees when com­plet­ing these transactions.

Is Nifty Gateway safe?

As with all NFT plat­forms, it is impor­tant to con­sid­er the safe­ty and secu­ri­ty of using them and ensure your dig­i­tal assets stay pro­tect­ed. Over­all, Nifty Gate­way has tak­en steps to ensure the safe­ty of its users. The plat­form is backed by rep­utable investors, and it has been used by many high-pro­file artists and celebrities. 

Nifty Gate­way also employs indus­try-stan­dard secu­ri­ty mea­sures, such as encryp­tion and two-fac­tor authen­ti­ca­tion, to pro­tect users’ accounts and trans­ac­tions. More­over, Nifty Gate­way ben­e­fits from par­ent com­pa­ny Gemini’s focus on uphold­ing best prac­tices for secu­ri­ty in the cryp­tocur­ren­cy industry. 

Gem­i­ni com­pletes rou­tine bank com­pli­ances, fol­lows finan­cial reg­u­la­tions, and uses hard­ware secu­ri­ty and cus­to­di­al ser­vices to main­tain the secu­ri­ty of the Nifty Gate­way wal­let. Its cus­to­di­al sys­tem mod­el ensures that the mar­ket­place has own­er­ship of all NFTs list­ed on its platform. 

Despite this, Nifty Gate­way isn’t immune to hacks. In March 2021, a few Nifty users com­plained of an “account takeover,” where­in their NFTs had van­ished from their Nifty Gate­way accounts. Nifty Gate­way claimed that its web­site had not been infil­trat­ed and that the affect­ed accounts lacked two-fac­tor authen­ti­ca­tion, com­pro­mis­ing their own secu­ri­ty. Accord­ing to reports and cer­tain con­sumers, Nifty Gate­way was suc­cess­ful in recov­er­ing the stolen goods.

More­over, as with any invest­ment or finan­cial trans­ac­tion, there is always some lev­el of risk involved. NFTs can be volatile, and their val­ue can fluc­tu­ate sig­nif­i­cant­ly over time. It’s impor­tant to do your own research and under­stand the risks before invest­ing in any NFT.