For you to buy NFTs you need to own the cryptocurrency of the blockchain. For anything on opensea.io that will be ETH (or at least that is the best way to start), which stands for Ether, the native currency of Ethereum (the blockchain).

Sign Up on Coinbase

To buy ETH using Coinbase is easy and straight forward. You sign up on Coinbase.com and go through the registration process. Depending on your country and legal residence it might be a bit different, ultimately they will want to check your identification (for legal reasons) but that’s okay – every other marketplace does this too.

Set up Payment Method on Coinbase

Now that you are sign into Coinbase you can buy ETH on Coinbase. For that to happen you must connect an instant payment method (like a debit card, Apple pay, Paypal etc.). If you don’t have that (or Coinbase doesn’t let you) you can also manually wire money to them.

Buy ETH

Once the payment method is set up you can go ahead and buy ETH. Click on “Ethereum” within the app or website and then select “Trade” => “Buy ETH”. Now you can select an amount. Depending on how expensive your NFT you can pick the right amount of ETH. Important here: You need to pay gas fees, so add a little extra. If you wanted to buy an NFT for 0.1 ETH I would buy at least 0.15 ETH now. Note: Coinbase is charging you a fee for buying ETH. This is their business model and other crypto exchanges do the same. You might be able to save some money on other exchanges but for starters it’s not horrible to do this through Coinbase and pay the fee.

Send ETH to Metamask

Now that you own ETH you can do with it whatever you want. To buy NFTs you need to send it to your Metamask walllet though. Click into Metamask and copy your wallet address (double check!). Then go to Coinbase and select “Send ETH”. Paste your Metamask wallet address and go through the process. It will cost you a transaction fee (usually quite small) and after confirmation it will take up to 30 minjutes for your ETH to show up in your Metamask Wallet.