As of late, NFTs have made their mark within the world of cryptocurrency, specifically generating buzz around the term ‘digital collectibles’. NFTs, or ‘non-fungible tokens’ are collectible digital assets that hold value in the form of cryptocurrency. These digital assets are issued on an Ethereum blockchain.

Unlike Bitcoin, NFTs are unique and non-fungible, meaning that it can’t be exchanged like-for-like. Additionally, NFTs store an increased amount of information, elevating it above pure currency. For this reason, NFTs can be introduced to any and all spheres of trade.

With the looming pandemic, many have turned to online investments in the form of NFT collectible items. Such items can range anywhere from art to virtual cats and baseball cards.

We’ve put together a list of some of the top trending NFT collectibles available at the moment. We’ll delve into what they are, how they work and why exactly they’re trending.

What is a NFT (or Non-funginble token)

A non-fungible token (NFT) is a unique digital asset that is recorded on a blockchain. It is used to prove ownership of digital assets such as art, music, in-game items, videos and more. Unlike physical money or other fungible tokens, NFTs are not interchangeable – each one is unique and can not be replaced. They are bought and sold just like any other asset and the ownership is cryptographically stored on the blockchain. An NFT offers a secure way to verify the authenticity of an item and is becoming increasingly popular with digital collectors and investors.

For more information on non-fungible tokens and how they work, check out our Ultimate Guide to NFTs, that breaks down all you need to know about this new phenomenon.

Where to start

Getting started with NFTs can be quite complicated at first if you have no experience with cryptocurrency. If you don’t have any cryptocurrency yet then you can buy them at Binance, Bitfinex or Hotbit. The second step is to get a wallet, like Metamask, to transfer the cryptocurrency to.

Metamask is compatible with most of the NFT-sites mentioned in this article and our Ultimate Guide to NFTs article.

Once you’ve transferred the cryptocurrency to your wallet, you can connect it to for example OpenSea and start buying, or selling your first NFT artwork!

Trending NFT Collectibles

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC)

The Bored Ape Yacht Club was created by four friends who set out to make some dope apes, test our skills, and try to build something. Something ridiculous as they say themselves. Look how that escalated, becoming one of the most wanted NFT’s on the blockchain.

BAYC is a digital collectible platform for 10,000 unique pieces of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) living on the Ethereum blockchain. As a Yacht Club Member, your Bored Ape grants you exclusive access to various benefits, including THE BATHROOM, an interactive graffiti board. Future plans for the platform include continued development of innovative features.

The most expensive Bored Ape ever sold is Bored Ape #8817, which sold for an incredible $3.4 million (819 ETH). This is the highest price ever recorded for a Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT and it was purchased by an anonymous buyer in 2022. Not far behind this record-breaking sale is Bored Ape #3749, which sold for $2.9 million (769 ETH). Other high priced Bored Apes include #4580 at $1.8 million and #8585 at $933.9k. These sales are all testament to the popularity of these collectible digital art pieces and their value to dedicated collectors across the globe.

Each Bored Ape is completely unique and programmatically generated from over 170 possible traits, including expression, headwear, clothing, and more. All apes are dope, but some are rarer than others.

CryptoKitties

You may have heard of CryptoKitties before, in relation to Bitcoin and Ether. CryptoKitties was one of the first types of NFTs when the movement began.

Just like all NFTs, CryptoKitties are unique and exist as a digital asset that is stored on a blockchain. Unlike owning cryptocurrency on a blockchain such as Ether, CryptoKitties record ownership of an individual token that a ‘kitty’ represents.

You can buy and sell the CryptoKitties, but you can also breed them yourself if you own to kitties, but you can also let your kittie breed with a public sire. Instead of selling your cat, you can also make it available to breed with someone elses kittie. You can buy, sell and breed on the website of CryptoKitties self, but you can also trade them at the huge Opensea NFC marketplace.

CryptoKitties are similar to Bitcoin in that you own a digital asset that holds value. Using something called your private key you’ll be able to assign your kitty to a new owner, if you decide to sell it.

This can be done on exchange for other NFT digital collectibles, cryptocurrency or fungible cash. For a glimpse into the value that these kitties hold, note that recently a single CryptoKitty was sold for around $110 000!

CryptoPunks

The CryptoPunks platform was first launched in June of 2017 by American Game Studio Larva Labs. Released before CryptoKitties, CryptoPunks are undoubtedly an OG of the NFT game.

Currently there are 10 000 CryptoPunk characters available, and are paired with proof of ownership via the Ethereum blockchain.

Of the CryptoPunks, other creatures are also available – including zombies, apes and aliens!

Prices of CryptoPunks are in a league of their own, with 1 alien CryptoPunk 7804 selling for around $7.5 million. It was this sale that broke NFT records, winning as the most expensive NFT ever! The original buyer of CryptoPunk 7804 purchased the collectible for around $15 000 – making an exponential profit of over $7 million.

It’s important to note that CryptoPunks have ensured they remain a rarity and will not be creating any more outside of the pre-existing 10 000. Owning a CryptoPunk is an incredible achievement – to get your hands on one you can visit Opensea, the largest platform for NFT digital collectibles.

NBA Top Shot

NBA’s Top Shot is a digital platform created by Dapper Labs in a partnership with basketball leagues.

The platform has created its own basketball trading cards that track ownership via NFTs on a Blockchain put in place by Dapper Labs. These digital card packs have become increasingly popular as users can showcase their owned cards online. The partnership has been extremely successful, with cards valuing at tens of thousands of dollars.

The service itself also allows users to both buy and sell NBA match highlights in the form of short video clips. To put the demand of these digital collectibles in perspective, recently a NBA Top Shot highlight video featuring LeBron James was sold for a whopping $208 000.

The desirability depends on a few factors. First of all the rarity level is important, because that determines the edition size per moment. Legendary packs are rare with an edition size of 50, they are also the most expensive. Rare packs are a bit cheaper as the edition size is between 250 to 300. Common cards come in large editions and are cheap to buy. Second, each card of a moment has a serial number, where serial number 1 is the most desired (consider it the first edition). The third deciding factor is the player and the moment itself.

It’s important to note that trades do rise and drop with platforms like these, however, it’s more than likely that NFT collectibles aren’t going anywhere any time soon!

Minecraft NFTs

A more recent form of digital collectibles that has been introduced to the market are Minecraft NFTs. This upcoming form of NFTs Is likely to boom in coming months as it was only just introduced in January of 2021.

The concept was launched by Microsoft and works in a way that rewards players of one of the most popular games, with NFTs that they can use inside Minecraft itself. With the acquired NFTs, players can unlock new quests on the Minecraft server and spawn Microsoft Azure heroes using the EnjinCraft plugin.

Creating a sort of interconnectedness between gaming, applications and the cryptocurrency, Minecraft NFTs allow users to unlock unique perks such as fungible tokens, Telegram/Discord benefits and protective companions to name a few.

SuperFarm

SuperFarm is the next generation NFT infrastructure, introducing a new and improved NFT farming. It’s no secret that NFT farming has been problematic in the past, with issues surrounding how it’s set up and the necessary coding. Adding continuous advancement to both decentralized and open infrastructures, SuperFarm empowers all users to easily set up their farms and create their own digital collectible ecosystem without any prior coding knowledge.

Users will also be offered a number of functionalities via SuperFarm, including NFT farming, an NFT store, NFT creation and access to The Superverse.

The Superverse carries out exclusive NFT drops on a number of the platform’s partners. If you’re able to save up the required amount of tokens, you’ll also be granted access to the Superverse NFT release.

Hashmasks

A little different to the collectibles we mentioned previously, Hashmasks is a platform that offers digital art collectibles from over 70 artists from around the world.

Originally launched by Suum Cuique Labs in Switzerland, there are currently 16 384 unique digital portraits available on the network. Each portrait has its own unique character, mask, characteristics and items.

As with all NFTs, each portrait can only be owned by one person at a time, however, Hashmasks required buyers to give the purchased portrait its own unique name. This can be done using the platforms unique token, the Name Changing Token (NCT). With a total of 1,830 NCT, users are able to rename a Hashmask on the Ethereum blockchain.

The first buyout of the artworks occurred in late January of 2021, after which they were resold at a higher price. There are a wide range of different Hashmasks, including animal masks, pixel masks and unicorn animal masks. To put the popularity of this NFT in perspective, since January of 2021, the sales of Hashmasks has reached around $45 million (27,269 ETH).

Decentraland – Virtual Land For Sale

Decentraland is a virtual world powered by the Ethereum blockchain. It allows anyone to buy, sell, and rent land in the form of Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs). The virtual world is made up of parcels of land that can be used to build games, projects or other forms of digital content.

The Decentraland Marketplace makes buying and selling land easy. Landowners can list their parcels for sale or rent on the marketplace, allowing other users to purchase them with MANA tokens. Landowners can also choose to charge a monthly subscription fee for renting out their parcel. This allows them to generate passive income from their holdings in the virtual world.

In addition to land parcels, Decentraland also offers wearables, emotes and name NFTs as well as various items such as weapons and tools on its marketplace which users can purchase with MANA tokens. These can be used to customize your avatar in-game or trade with other players.

Decentraland has become one of the most popular NFT collections over the past few weeks and continues to draw attention from investors looking for unique opportunities within the Web3 space. With its user-friendly interface and