The recent months have been a significant increase in terms of the reputation for non-fungible tokens (NFTs). As cryptocurrency persistently managed to steal people’s attention during the COVID-19 pandemic as a contemporary form of currency, it also paved the way for NFTs to reach their current level of popularity. NFT collectors have now been deemed “celebrities” in this booming industry. Considering that current NFTs look like digital artworks that are published on the internet, there will be collectors who will do whatever it takes to diversify their collections. In a sense, collecting NFTs may seem like people in the past who traveled the world to search for niche things to add to their collections.
Another interesting aspect of NFTs is their potential prices when they’re on sale or on an auction. While we can count the potential worth of an NFT in actual money, you can’t buy them with conventional money as you need cryptocurrencies to have them. Instead of turning people away, the fact that people can collect NFTs with cryptocurrencies makes NFTs seem more interesting instead.
This begs the question: why does collecting NFTs seems so popular for some people? One possible explanation behind their logic is explained by Jean-Baptiste Costa de Beauregard, a renowned art collector. Since Jean-Baptiste and his wife began watching over the development of NFTs in 2020, they decided to purchase their first NFT in 2022.
Citing his reasons, Jean-Baptiste stated that he watched over the NFT community as an observer of this rapidly developing space. Akin to a sociology researcher, as he said, Jean-Baptiste said that he started wanting to have one of the NFTs that he had seen for the last two years. As such, the first NFT that he bought was the one by Kenny Schachter, an NFT insight expert on Twitter. Feeling that he has a “relationship” with Kenny’s insights regarding NFTs, Jean-Baptiste stated that he is going to collect NFTs from other artists that he admires.
The relationship between an artist and a collector, in this regard, is seen as the most likely reason behind people’s motivation to collect NFTs. By learning about the narrative story and personal motivations behind the artists’ motivation in creating their NFT artworks, collectors can cherish their value and the hard work put into these NFTs. Moreover, NFT artworks are slowly becoming a source of income for many artists who struggle to find income in the middle of the pandemic. Since blockchain enables the chance for artists to earn appreciation value of their work perpetually even after their artwork is sold, the financial potential for the artists seems huge.
Even further, the blockchain’s transparency enables artists to follow the trajectory of their work from one collector to another. This means a big boon for artists who struggle to find the right connections to sell their artworks to. With artists finding a new space to publicize their artworks and the increasing number of collectors hungry for new collections, it slowly becomes clear that collecting NFTs is the new fad of this year.
Before we move on, we need to remember that the ranking position of the top NFT collectors can change each week. This week, the following list is the list of the top collectors of the month:
Since starting his NFT collection in November 2021, Fozzie Bear has steadily built his reputation as a collector with such consistency that it leads him to his current position. He is currently the owner of “Corner”, known as @jmw327’s very first NFT artwork. Purchased on May 19, 2022, Fozzie won the auction by buying the NFT for 20.90 ETH ($42,231).
In case you’re wondering what the NFT looks like, it takes place in a pixel-based depiction of a small corner shop in a fantastical city.
Twitter: @codethsmithy
2. earlhege
As an experienced cryptocurrency and NFT user, earlhege, or Path, has started his collection career in March 2021. Today, he has collected a total of 529 NFTs. Based on this number alone, we can see that Path is a genuinely motivated collector who is looking for more NFTs to collect. Lately, he managed to get a total of 12 NFTs worth 11.613 ETH ($23,465), which is quite a number that makes him the second top collector of the week.
Twitter: none
If you want to know an example of an enthusiastic collector, look no further than Jagged. Despite his relatively shorter tenure as a collector compared to others, he managed to collect a whopping amount of 12,717 NFTs alone in OpenSea as of this month! One might wonder how big his enthusiasm is when it comes to collecting NFTs.
When looking at his collection, it’s obvious that he has a huge thing for Pepe the Frog. Because of that, it’ll be quite a challenge to find an NFT that isn’t about Pepe in his collection. Currently, he has 38 NFTs with a worth of 8.851 ETH ($17,884).
Twitter: @jaggedsoft
4. P_Azuro
If you’ve heard about the Azuro Protocol before (democratization of betting, if you’re curious), then the name P_Azuro will probably ring a bell to you. As a major contributor to the protocol, he currently has collected a total of 7 NFTs in Foundation, where 4 of them are procured during the past week.
His most top-notch collection is “Floating World” by Gelo, a collection of architectural projects that can be currently found on Foundation. At the moment this article is made, he has made a contribution of $11,537 or 5.71% to the overall collection.
Twitter: P_Azuro
The last on this list is Keltron, who recently reached the fifth spot in the ever-changing list thanks to his recent purchase of an NFT. Currently, he has 11 NFTs in his collection, which is then added by “Fish from Ladies”, an NFT made by the renowned creator mcbess. His main collection is the World of Women NFT, and he has made a contribution of 5.69%, worth $11,497.
Twitter: keltron_
There are enthusiastic collectors of NFTs, and then there are the richest collectors from all of them. Being richest in this context means those who have made great strides in collecting NFTs, thanks to their overall enthusiasm and financial power.
Currently, the richest collector is Eric Young, who originally entered the crypto world by buying his first bitcoin in 2015. Since then, he continuously searches for notable NFT artworks that he deems as “notable”. Already spent more than $1 million only for NFTs, he is famous in the NFT community thanks to his financial spending on these artworks.
What made him known as the richest collector is that he doesn’t end up merely collecting digital NFTs but also their digital components. From this fact alone, we can see that collecting the digital components of these NFTs is the next step of being a collector of NFTs.
From knowing about their collections and things they’ve done to collect NFTs, we can see why becoming NFT collectors is definitely a thing in the modern era. If you’re a self-proclaimed collector of artworks, maybe it’s time for you to wisely collect some NFTs for your own collection?
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