Wen Coinbase? Fans and investors of non-fungible tokens finally got their answer with the official beta launch of the Coinbase NFT marketplace Wednesday morning.
What Happened: The NFT marketplace from Coinbase Global Inc (NASDAQ:COIN) is live for those invited by email from a waitlist that includes millions of people.
“Coinbase NFT is now live – and you’re invited to join our beta,” said an email this author received.
The instructions to set up an account are to visit nft.coinbase.com and click sign in. A unique access code contained in the email was needed to sign up for the beta launch.
Users can connect a Coinbase Wallet or their MetaMask to the Coinbase NFT marketplace.
“gm! You’ve been selected to participate in the invite-only beta release of Coinbase NFT! We’re thrilled to have you, and can’t wait for you to get started.”
A username and email address is needed for the account. Users can also choose to upload a profile picture and write a description about themselves.
First Impressions: Users are welcomed into the platform with lists of some trending collections and NFTs for sale. An option to follow certain investors and creators is also available and highlighted on the front page.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong has 231 followers at the time of writing, and the site indicates he joined the platform on March 1, 2022.
Highlighted collections on the home page include Azuki, Adam Bomb Squad, Where My Vans Go, pplpleasr, World of Women, Cool Cats and Doodles.
Coinbase has been announcing launch partners over the last few months, and many of those projects were not mentioned on the homepage or in browsing the collections.
One item that is different from NFT marketplace leader OpenSea is a comments section. Users can put comments on NFTs, which could be a great test to see if it leads to good conversation instead of shilling other projects or useless comments.
One noticeable missing item is the percentage on traits. When this author clicked on an NFT for sale from Mutant Ape Yacht Club, it listed the traits, but did not show the percentage of NFTs in the collection that had those traits. The image was also not clickable to see the listing price of other NFTs with the same traits.
A collection like Bored Ape Yacht Club, that has no NFTs listed for sale on the Coinbase marketplace, does not populate a floor price, but still shows the size of the collection, all NFTs in the collection and the seven-day volume of the collection.
Related Link: How To Buy NFTs
Why It’s Important: While this is just a beta test for now and the number of users onboarded could be slow to start, this could be a very important event for Coinbase.
Coinbase announced its plans to launch an NFT marketplace back in October and saw two million people sign up for the waitlist within the first two weeks. The waitlist now has over three million people.
“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,” Coinbase said at the time.
Coinbase planned to launch the marketplace with Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) based NFTs first, with plans to bring additional cryptocurrencies to the platform in the future. Coinbase could have a competitive advantage versus rivals due to its users having existing wallets which can be used to easily buy cryptocurrency to be spent in the NFT marketplace.
Coinbase currently relies heavily on exchange fees from the buying and selling of cryptocurrencies, which often leads to the company having strong quarters when crypto is hitting new highs or lows and experiencing extreme volatility.
Having an NFT platform could create a new revenue stream and help the company diversify its financials.
Coinbase ended the fourth quarter with 11.4 million monthly transacting users and 89 million verified users.
Rival OpenSea was recently valued at $13 billion. If Coinbase can capture a meaningful share of the NFT market, it could increase the valuation of the overall company, with a new segment not currently being priced in.
Price Action: Coinbase shares are down 1.65% to $148.78 on Wednesday. Shares have traded between $140.53 to $368.90 over the last 52-weeks.
Photo: Courtesy of Marco Verch Professional on Flickr
