What is a PFP NFT?
And the cultural significance of it explained
PFP stands for Profile Pic. The main reason for buying this type of NFT is to …. Use it for your profile picture on social media!
Now at this point, you are probably wondering why you would spend any amount of money on this NFT when a picture of your face is free! Valid question. The answer cuts straight to the core of the cultural shift underway right now. And the shift is pretty neat, actually.
The first reason for this is because of the underlying technology for how the crypto money works. Owning crypto means you have sole-custody of your assets. Your money isn’t locked up in some safe at a bank. It’s not recoverable if you forget your password. You can’t go up to a physical location and ask someone to give you the money. You own it and you are responsible for it. If you are a person who wants to participate in the conversations of NFTs and cryptocurrency (which once you buy, you will want to talk about it), then you need to adopt an anonymous online brand for yourself. Just like how you want to use your name and face on social media platforms to build your recognizable self across social platforms, you do the same thing, but in an anonymous way. The reason for this is security. If people know that you, “John Doe”, owns an NFT worth $10K or that you invested $5K in Bitcoin yesterday, that is a huge security risk for your identified self. People can find you on the street, make you open your phone and transfer the asset to them. There is no 3rd party protection for you. So, to be part of the NFT community, you want to be relatively anonymous, yet you still want to be recognized for who you are. The PFPs solve that problem! You can use the same PFP across all your media platforms.
To learn more about self-custody wallets: https://medium.com/new-to-nfts/why-do-i-need-so-many-nft-wallets-dd6088d75135
The second reason is to build your NFT notoriety in the community. You can buy these to show how long you’ve been in the NFT game which is a status symbol of “Yeah, I was there for that” or “I knew about this artist before you”. It can also represent a community that you are part of and contribute to. In some projects, the community you buy into can be quite lucrative. In the case of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, the most successful PFP to date, you have celebrities like Jimmy Fallon as part of the community.
Owning one of the other Bored Ape Yacht Club PFPs literally gives you direct access to the likes of Jimmy Fallon. (Word on the street was that Kylie Jenner was denied access to the community😲). In other cases, you are connected with like-minded people that are globally diverse but aligned about what the NFT represents. Some PFPs are promising in-person meet ups and access to exclusive in-person clubs around the world! At the end of the day, the PFPs are a great way to meet people that you would like that you may not have access to in your geo-location.
And, lastly, you can earn money from owning the NFT PFP. Some people earn money from buying multiples of the project at “first mint”. Others have their PFPs signed with talent agencies because they uniquely own the personality they’ve created using the PFP. The earning opportunities are as diverse as the NFT projects themselves!
The best way to get started is to have a solid first mint strategy. To do this, you first need to be watching all the drops coming up on any (or all) of the blockchains. Then, you need to do your own research (DYOR) to see if YOU believe that the project’s value will improve after first mint. Next, you will need to mark your calendar and make sure you show up the first minute of the first mint. It helps to pre-connect your wallet slightly ahead of mint time. Then, you buy as many as you planned to buy given the price. From there, you keep your favorite few out of the bunch and list the rest for above the first mint price. Fingers crossed your DYOR paid off and people who missed the mint or found out about the project late are willing to buy them at the higher price.
Happy PFP minting!
Join our small Discord! I will be hosting AMAs (ask me anything) in the next few weeks and months. My goal is to help one person at a time learn.
I also started my own PFP personality on Twitter — give a follow and see how it’s going!
For more reading:
