What is NBA Top Shot?

If you're on Twitter and have any bit of a sports following, you've probably heard about NBA Top Shot at this point.  But if you're like me, you were scratching your head and wondering what on earth this is and why people are paying for highlight reels which are called "Moments". These are what is referred to as NFTs in the crypto world.

Disclaimer: I am not a crypto or NFT expert. This information should not be taken as financial advice and should be used as purely informational resources. If I have made inaccuracies in my statements, you can always let me know in AMF slack or on Twitter @MatHouchens.

What are NFTs?

NFT means non-fungible tokens. But fungible and non-fungible are not just crypto concepts. They exist in the real world and you may have just never heard the terms applied in that manner.

Fungible

The US dollar is a fungible asset. It can be used and exchanged for any other dollar bill. Even cryptocurrency itself is a fungible item because that token can be exchanged with another token. With crypto you're changing blockchain transactions whereas that might not happen with a US dollar.

Non-fungible

You can deduce from the above that non-fungible means they are not interchangeable. A popular example in real world would be something like a ticket to an event or movie. While two movies may be seen as equal, that ticket for the experience could be different based on which row you're sitting in, maybe this movie is iMAX or perhaps I have luxury theater and you don't. You still exchange the ticket at the theater for a movie experience but they are not interchangeable. 

Does NBA Top Shot require crypto?

While the backbone of NBA Top Shot is based on blockchain, all transactions run through Dapper which allows you to make deposits and purchases with USD. This is a great opportunity for users that aren't familiar with cryptocurrency to join the fun of the digital NFT market without needing an extensive knowledge of crypto. The one downside right now is the ability to withdraw any funds requires a few weeks of active trading to get approved to take money out.

What are moments?

These are the NFTs of NBA Top Shot. They are produced in packs that you can purchase and open. You don't know what you're going to get in a pack until its opened. These sets have ranges of serials. Some are more scarce than others and really it's a whole other article to get into the intricacies.

How do I get moments on NBA Top Shot?

There are currently two methods to get moments on the site.

1. Packs

Though under recent criticisms for how available packs are, the limited opportunities to get packs that are similar to packs of cards that you can open digitally. The moments you open can range to all types of moments, some with limited editions, others more common. You don't know what you're going to get until you open the pack which is part of the fun in it. They really nailed the experience in terms of opening a pack and revealing what you get.

2. Marketplace

Because packs are limited right now, the marketplace is your best opportunity to purchase moments. These are listings put up by other users for moments they've acquired through purchases of packs or previously on the marketplace. 

Trades (not currently available)

One can only hope that trading moments becomes more streamlined and offered through the site directly without asking for a 3rd party escrow or trusting the person you're dealing with to gift a moment.

How do I know what a moment is worth?

As with any market, monitoring sales and listings in the marketplace is the best way to get a pulse of what something is work. There's a variety of sites available that help you see recent sales.

NBA Top Shot Marketplace Explorer on AMF

Here at Add More Funds, we created a tool to easily view marketplace listings on NBA Top Shot . 

Current Features

• Data grid of all moments including lowest ask, market cap, circulation, sales
  • Customize columns and export data (supporter)
• Lowest ask candlestick charts (supporter)
• Sales transaction charts (supporter)

Coming Soon Features

• Account valuation
  • Filter data grid by what you own
• Price alert / watchlist (supporter)
  • Filter data grid by your watch list
• Chrome Extension
  • Easily view data from AMF while on the Top Shot Marketplace with a browser bar extension.

These are just some of the immediate things we're looking to add to our NBA Top Shot tool.

Crypto Slam

Crypto Slam is more than just NBA Top Shot but you can view tons of sales data and information. It's not as easy to filter and search but it has tons of detailed data about what's happening with actual sales transactions.

Evaluate Market

Evaluate.market has some great tools as well showing you market movers, account valuation and overall trends of the marketplace.

How do I withdrawal money off of NBA Top Shot?

This is one of the things I've been most critical about in regards to NBA Top Shot. The ability to deposit funds is fine but getting your money off the site is such a nightmare. In fact, only around 5,000 people currently have that capability and the time delay to get approved has been crazy. It all runs through Dapper so you have a balance in your dapper account but because there isn't a whole lot you can do with the Dapper balance other than buy moments and select other things, it's doesn't have a whole lot of utility. I hope this is something they streamline in the near future to give people the ability to remove funds back into their bank accounts.

Why does NBA Top Shot always seem like they're in maintenance mode?

I'm a little out of my league on blockchain and how that works but my basic elementary understanding is this isn't as simple as firing up more bandwidth on a cloud server. Since this requires blockchain to buy and sell, each transaction is a bit more intricate and because of the huge success they've had. They still fall back on the beta tag for the site but doing this much business this quickly, they have to decide what makes sense to ramp up and when. I am hopeful they figure this out but it is absolutely frustrating when you can't transact or buy packs.