TL; DR Breakdown
- The CEO of Coinbase is confident that the company’s upcoming NFT marketplace would be bigger than the cryptocurrency exchange.
- The marketplace is expected to be launched to the public in the next quarter or two.
- Coinbase already partakes in the NFT industry through its venture arm, which invested in Opensea, the biggest NFT marketplace.
The leading cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase had previously disclosed it’s launching a proprietary NFT marketplace, following the frenzy in the crypto art space. According to the CEO and co-founder Brian Armstrong, they are excited about the future of non-fungible tokens in the cryptocurrency industry and believe it will constitute a big part of their business.
“We are very excited about NFTs, this is going to be a very large area for crypto in the future, and it already is today. […] It could be as big or bigger” than the company’s cryptocurrency business,” Armstrong said.
Coinbase could grow bigger with NFT
Coinbase is one of the go-to platforms for cryptocurrency trading; however, they reported a $1.3 billion revenue for quarter three, which was below expectation and forecast. At the moment, most of the exchange’s revenue is derived from users’ transaction fees, and one might say its move to NFT could be another strategy to diversify.
Coinbase NFT marketplace is designed as a peer-to-peer platform to make the minting, buying, selling, and auctioning of crypto art content seamless and efficient. Although there have been ongoing partnerships with issuers, the NFT marketplace is expected to launch in the next quarter or two. Given the footprint of the exchange in the global crypto industry, the Coinbase NFT marketplace could become a big part of the NFT market.
NFT boom just got started
The NFT space might see a boom in the next quarter as more institution focus is gearing towards its direction. For instance, social media giant Twitter recently set up a team to research crypto, blockchain, and decentralized technology, just as it integrated a tipping feature for users and planned to build an NFT authenticator feature.
Meanwhile, the largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance has already incepted its own NFT marketplace; perhaps, the wake-up call for Coinbase NFT marketplace.
