ONBOARDING: GETTING STARTED AS BLOCKCHAINART COLLECTOR OR ARTIST

Get familiar with essentials for becoming a blockchainart and cryptocollectibles collector or artist

Blockchainart, cryptocollectibles and NFTs are maybe the most impactful incentives to engage with crypto currencies and blockchain technology. But for end-users who don't have a deep understanding of the technology behind these structures it might be hard to get involved. We at B.A.D want to make the entry into the blockchain world a bit easier for you. We hope that the following resources are useful to get an initial understanding on how we got ourselves some coins, how we maintain our wallets, where we buy crypto art, and where we sell your NFTs.

I want to get myself some cryptos. What do I have to do?

Cryptocurrencies are sold and traded on exchanges. Whilst some exchanges require the possession of cryptocurrencies in order to trade them for other crypto currencies, there are exchanges where customers can buy cryptocurrencies with fiat money. When you are reading this introduction, it is most likely that you don't own crypto coins, but want to purchase some. In this case, it is highly recommended that you inform yourself in advance and that you act very carefully when getting active in the crypto market. For example, check if you are eligible to buy on certain exchanges (e.g. because of you age or your residency or your liquid funds). Also, it is essential that you undertake some research in advance to make sure that the platform you intend to buy cryptos on is not a scam website and thus a risk for your money and / or your identity to be stolen.

I did my homework and am sure that I acquired the knowledge to buy some cryptos. But how can I be sure not to be taken by scammers?

You never ever can. The risk of becoming victim of scammers is particularly high in the blockchain and crypto context, even for experienced users. For example, it might appear that hackers capture a website, or clone it and link to it with domain names very similar to the original, or they place different kinds of malware on websites, or they ask you for your private key or seed phrase, etc. A quite comprehensive list of warnings can be found on pages of people who are either users or providers of blockchain services, e.g.:

Because we want certainty while browsing, we installed browser extensions which check the websites we browse for malware. For users who browse Ethereum websites with Chrome: MyCropto recommends to install EAL or MetaMask or Cryptonite by Metacert - services which warn users when they happen to accidentially browse malicious websites.

I know now where to buy cryptos. But as they are "virtual money", where can I store them?

Cryptocurrencies are stored in wallets. Wallets are comparable with physical wallets. Within wallets, you have one or more wallet addresses, which are comparable with bank accounts. At the same time, for us as end-users, wallets are our interface to the blockchain. Crypto wallets are usually accessible for their owner only, and are super secure as long as users follow some basic rules (e.g. always triple-safe your seed phrase when first installing a wallet, and never ever share your private key). Via wallets, and by using a specific wallet address, we do our transactions, i.e. we receive or send crypto coins to and from a wallet address, and we buy and sell blockchain art or other NFTs by sending and receiving coins or tokens from and to our wallet address.
Thus, before owning crypto currencies, blockchain art, crypto collectibles or comparable assets, we needed to get hold of a wallet and an address. The current NFT market has a strong focus on Ethereum and Bitcoin based technologies, so we watched out for these two before we started. Once we bought cryptos, we transferred them from the exchange to our wallet (of which we own and triple-saved the seed phrase) by sending them to one of our wallet addresses (of which we own and triple-safed the private key). And from this specific address, we bought our first crypto assets (i.e. our blockchain art).

What the heck is going on? This is so complicated!

Yes, right, it is not easy. But once we reached this point, we really achieved a lot already. We are still early adopters, and this is the price we have to pay to be among the first. But hey, we keep going!

I bought crypto coins on an exchange, installed a wallet and have an address. But how to get this together now?

We avoid to store our assets (crypto currencies as well as crypto art and other NFTs) on exchanges, and we don't buy crypto art by using the exchange we bought our cryptos at. Thus, once we bought crypto coins on an exchange, we sent it to an address in our wallet. That's it. Why so complicated, you might ask? This is because we usually don't own the private key of our exchange address, which puts our assets potentially at risk. Also, the exchange address might not be related to our assets and funds only, but be shared with other exchange users. Thus it might happen that our digital art simply disappears in the nirvana of third-party accounts when we buy it through an exchange address or send it to an exchange address. Or it might happen that an exchanges closes down, and with it our address and all our funds on it disappear, because we unfortunately don't hold the private key of our address. Sorry for us then, because our stuff will be lost. Irreversible and forever. Yes, time to cry ...

I own crypto currencies and put them into my wallet. Where can I buy blockchainart and cryptocollectibles?

If you are looking for a blockchain art market place, you can have a look into the B.A.D data base. Head over to the B.A.D data base and filter for "sales platform" and/or "marketplaces". The collection you will see listed is most likely not comprehensive, but can provide a first overview for people new in the field. And even though platforms are different, the procedure when buying items with cryto currencies is very similar: We need to own crypto coins in a wallet and have an address - these are the most essential basics we needed when we went for our first blockchain art. Hint: Most pages provide instructions on how to interact with their service, which is a must-read for people new in the field.

Now that I own digital blockchain art: Where is it and where can I see it?

The digital art we bought by using blockchain technology is (irreversibly) tied up with our wallet address. But this doesn't mean that we automatically see our art when we access your wallet (some wallets are made to display blockchain art and other NFT, some aren't). So what do we do to see what we own? Sometimes, we access the platforms where we purchased an item and check our gallery or profile page to see our assets. Or we go to an independent third-party platform, connect to our wallet address and can see a list of our items. That's basically it. Still not sure where to go to? Our "ONBOARDING: BLOCKCHAINART PLATFORMS & MARKET PLACES" section lists some dApps (decentralized applications, e.g. blockchain art platforms and market place) which we use to display our blockchain art.

I am an artist and want to make my art available via blockchain technology. What do I have to do?

Basically, we would start with the steps described above: Get ourselves a wallet, an address, some coins, and head over to a dApp whith which we can watch the art we produced. But as an artist who wants to make their works available to others, we would need to do this 'putting the art on the blockchain' thing (we call it 'tokenizing'). That's what would distinguish us from the broad mass of collectors then ;-) To tokenize our art, we would resort to very good tools some nice people developed to make this step easy for us - because we are not programmers, but end-users. Maybe you want to have a look at our "ONBOARDING: BLOCKCHAINART PLATFORMS & MARKET PLACES" for an overview of such tools. Watch out for what contains "tokenizing" in the headline, and what is labelled "all-in-one solutions". The different platforms provide comprehensive instructions about what to do to tokenize artworks.

I want to sell some pieces of art I once collected. Where can I do this?

There are several options available where we can re-sell art. Some sales platforms might offer the opportunity to sell art which collectors bought through their service. Some don't, so we have to check market places and see if they would sell our asset. And again, B.A.D had a look and is happy to provide a list of some market places: "ONBOARDING: BLOCKCHAINART PLATFORMS & MARKET PLACES".