Morgan Chittum

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 <li>“As institutional players [and] high-net-worth individuals get interested in the [NFT] market, they&#8217;re going to need people who can give them quality advice,” said Co-founder Duncan Cock Foster</li>
 <li>Nifty Gateway will advise clients on matters including onboarding, private sales, off-market acquisitions, collection development and market intelligence</li>
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Museums, funds, family offices, corporations and large brands now all have something in common: the option to join Nifty Gateway’s NFT Advisory Program.&nbsp;



The NFT (non-fungible token) marketplace is launching a new service for institutional clients — those of which are seeking guidance about their collectible crypto investments.



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow">“As institutional players [and] high-net-worth individuals get interested in the market, they&#8217;re going to need people who can give them quality advice,” Duncan Cock Foster, co-founder of Nifty Gateway, told Blockworks.</blockquote>



The program will help clients with onboarding, private sales, off-market acquisitions, market intelligence and insights, along with global support. As of now, it is free of charge.



“If you look at the way that the traditional art market developed, it&#8217;s always been a market that&#8217;s difficult for people to understand,” Cock Foster said. “There&#8217;s a number of different prominent art advisors for the traditional [art] world, so I think that this is an inevitable aspect of NFT development.”



Nifty Gateway, which was co-founded by twin brothers Duncan and Griffin Cock Foster, was acquired by cryptocurrency exchange Gemini in November 2019.



The marketplace distinguishes itself from competitors OpenSea and LooksRare because Nifty users have the option to purchase their digital collectibles in US dollars instead of solely cryptocurrencies like ether.



“We believe that both real-world and digital collectibles will migrate onto blockchains in the form of [NFTs],” Tyler Winklevoss, co-founder of Gemini, said in a <a href="https://www.gemini.com/blog/gemini-expands-into-non-fungible-tokens-nfts-with-nifty-gateway-%E2%84%A2" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">statement</a> about the acquisition.



Tara Harris, the director of collector services at Nifty Gateway, said that the company also has “a very aggressive hiring plan” to expand its NFT advisory board.



The program, however, isn’t “necessarily an exclusive club” or a “gated community,” Harris said. Rather, the new service is intended to further Nifty Gateway’s mission of onboarding 1 billion people into the nascent NFT space.



“This really is our way of bringing in bigger players to continue to drive growth and access in this marketplace and to scale out that access to more and more people through institutional players,” Harris added. “We&#8217;re really here to provide thoughtful access and a starting point for people.”



Nifty Gateway’s news closely follows Mastercard’s Feb. 15 <a href="https://www.mastercard.com/news/press/2022/february/mastercard-expands-consulting-with-practices-dedicated-to-crypto-open-banking-and-esg/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announcement</a>, when the financial services company said it would expand its consulting efforts to “NFT strategy development” for clients.



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