Coinbase launching NFT marketplace, taking on OpenSea
14:59, 13 October 2021
Coinbase is launching a new non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace, creation and sales platform, the company announced on its blog.
“Just as Coinbase helped millions of people access Bitcoin for the first time in an easy and trusted way – we want to do the same for NFTs,” said vice president of product, ecosystem Sanchan Saxena in the post announcing the new offering.
The move pits Coinbase squarely in competition with NFT trading platform OpenSea. Coinbase owns an equity stake in OpenSea via affiliated venture capital fund Coinbase Ventures. Coinbase Ventures participated in OpenSea’s second round of seed funding, according to dealroom.co.
OpenSea currently controls 97% of the NFT trading volume, according to Dune Analytics. NFT trading volume averages over $3bn per month, with $1.36bn traded this month alone through 12 October, for a $113.8m daily average.
New platform
“OpenSea owns something like 97% of the NFT market,” Stefan von Imhof, co-founder of Alternative Assets, said in an email to Capital.com. “Time to go after ‘em!”
The new platform will be Ethereum based, supporting the ERC-721 and ERC-1155 blockchain standards over decentralised contracts offering metadata transparency.
All NFTs will be on-chain and multi-chain support will be offered in the future.
Early interest
Aside from “launching this year,” no timing was disclosed for the product launch, though Coinbase is taking sign-ups. As of 10:00 a.m. EDT Wednesday, the waitlist currently totals just under 650,000.
“We are getting a lot of sign-ups,” tweeted Saxena shortly after the announcement. “We are seeing insane loads on our servers.”
Coinbase shares moved lower Wednesday, down $4.21 to $245.12 in mid-morning trading from the $246.50 opening share price.