Many users still don't quite understand how gifts work in Telegram. Let's take a closer look at how to buy, upgrade, sell, and convert them into NFTs, and why they are needed in general.
First of all, it is worth noting that gifts can be given to other users or to yourself using Telegram's internal currency, Stars. If you want to buy Stars for cryptocurrency, you can do so using this link.
To buy a gift for Stars, you need to go to "settings", select "Send a gift" and specify the recipient. It is important to remember that only rare gifts can be upgraded. Each collection has a limited edition, and the smaller it is, the higher the cost of the gift on the secondary market. At the moment, only three types of rare gifts are available, each of which is released in a print run of 500,000 pieces. You can view the total supply by clicking on any of the already sold gifts.
After purchasing a rare gift, you can upgrade it. To do this, open the gift ("Settings -> My Profile -> Gifts") and click the "Upgrade" button. This will give your gift unique characteristics, such as a model, background, and pattern, which affect its rarity and cost. You can add an upgraded gift to your profile by clicking the "Wear" button. Please note that the upgrade feature is not available immediately, but is added gradually. The upgrade costs 25,000 Stars when the feature first appears, then the price drops to 25 Stars within 24 hours. This is done to protect against mass purchase and upgrade of gifts by bots.
After 21 days of upgrading, the gift can be converted into NFT and withdrawn to your wallet via Fragment.com. However, this will require verification. If you do not need to withdraw to the blockchain, then upgraded gifts can be sold via the Tonnel Relayer Bot. Before making a deal, it is recommended to study the previous sales of your gift in the "Activity" section, applying the appropriate filters.
It is worth considering that the gift theme is very popular now, but how long this trend will last is unknown. There is information that Telegram plans to release new collections of rare gifts. As for the profitability of buying, converting and selling gifts at a particular point in time, you can calculate it yourself at any time, based on the average price of the gift you are interested in on the exchange and the amount of costs for buying and converting the gift. There is also a share of luck in this whole process, since you do not know in advance the rarity of your gift after conversion (depends on the rarity of its parameters). And the price of the same gift, depending on its rarity, can differ by tens of times. In addition, we do not yet know for sure whether gifts will become more expensive over time, or, on the contrary, the price will eventually fall.
