Announced in October 2021, Coinbase’s marketplace dedicated to NFTs is now accessible to a handful of users in the United States. With this new service, Coinbase takes a step closer to Web3.
Six months later, Coinbase has finally taken the leap. After having announced in October 2021 its intention to launch a marketplace dedicated to NFTs (non-fungible tokens, or “non-fungible tokens”), the largest American cryptocurrency exchange platform has just launched the beta version. Initially, the platform will be accessible to a handful of users in the United States. Additional users will be added from a waiting list over the next few weeks.
This marketplace is part of the shift initiated by Coinbase to open up to Web3, presented as the next major Internet revolution. In the coming weeks, Coinbase plans to add new features “which will gradually give life to our vision of a Web3 social marketplace”such as support for NFTs on multiple blockchains and the ability to purchase NFTs with a Coinbase account or credit card. “Over time, we intend to decentralize more functionality by moving it from Coinbase technology to decentralized solutions”says the cryptocurrency exchange, which claims 89 million users worldwide.
In 2021, NFT sales brought in $25 billion. During the last two quarters of the past year, NFT sales have soared. They amounted to 10.7 billion dollars in the third quarter, then to 11.6 billion during the fourth. But the euphoria seems to be over, as evidenced by NFT sales on the Ethereum blockchain, which have halved since the start of the year on the OpenSea marketplace. They reached about 2.5 billion dollars in March, against 5 billion in January.