Can Crypto Help Me Make Major Life Purchases?

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A home is probably one of the most important, costly purchases you can make. Missed payments on your mortgage can jeopardize your entire investment. You could, of course, pay all cash, but who has half a million dollars just lying around in their bank account? What if I were to tell you that you can supplement your cash with other assets, digital assets like cryptocurrencies and NFTs?

Cryptocurrencies

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Visa now accepts Ethereum, and Mastercard now has a Bitcoin card. That means that if realtors, lenders, and sellers accept credit cards, they accept crypto payments. Because real estate transactions are so sensitive and consequential, one should check with a residential title agency before making a crypto transaction to buy a home. A title insurer can also be helpful for REO transactions, which can be a great way to get property at a low price.

However, one could argue that using crypto payments to purchase property is every bit as much a form of speculation as investing in cryptocurrency. Within a few months, Bitcoin has dropped to $30,000 from its ATH of about $65,000, and Ethereum has reached as low as $1,800 from its ATH of over $4,400. Those are the major cryptocurrencies. Altcoins like Polygon are behaving even more erratically.

NFTs

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When people think of digital assets, they usually think of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH). What they often overlook are NFTs (non-fungible tokens). And yet, if you want to be a digital art collector, you should be well-versed in NFTs.

So, what is the difference between non-fungible tokens and fungible tokens? Fungible tokens include cryptocurrencies and fiat currencies, like dollars and euros. Even though Bitcoin is different from a fiat currency in that it uses Blockchain technology, it is still interchangeable. One can theoretically exchange one Bitcoin for another at the same value. NFTs are not interchangeable because each NFT is unique in its exchange value. Whether it is a piece of digital art, virtual real estate, or a domain name, as a digital collectible, it is constantly fluctuating in response to market trends in a manner completely different than the other digital collectibles. NFTs have more scarcity than regular fiat currencies and cryptocurrencies, including cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, which was founded on a scarcity model, with only 21 million in existence.

Those investors and homeowners interested in finding and trading digital collectibles at a good profit should search for the best NFT marketplace. NFT marketplaces are NFT platforms for the buying and selling of digital art, virtual real estate, and other digital collectibles. The type of NFT available at each marketplace can vary with the Blockchain technology on which each platform is built: Ethereum, Cardano, Binance, etc.

Ethereum, for example, is in use by many NFT marketplaces: OpenSea, Rarible, SuperRare, Nifty Gateway, Enjin Marketplace, and Foundation. OpenSea trades NFT projects like Decentraland and CryptoKitties, the former being used for virtual real estate and the latter being used for digital artwork. Nifty Gateway has the backing of Gemini creators, the Winklevoss twins. Enjin is very popular with gamers and uses NFTs related to video games.

There are other options for those who do not want to pay the high gas fees associated with Ethereum-related projects. Atomic Market is built on EOSIO blockchain, BakerySwap is built on Binance, and NFT Showroom is built on Hive.

Collectible Conclusion

If you know that the market is going to drop, make your monthly payments in crypto. If, however, you are wrong and we return to a bull market with Bitcoin doing a 4x in a matter of six months, you will be experiencing some serious FOMO. If your seller, lender, or realtor accepts NFTs and other collectibles, you are looking at an even greater degree of speculation.