Yesterday, Coinbase announced that it will be launching Coinbase NFT, a marketplace for users to trade Ethereum-based NFTs, before the end of the year. This move is going to have a huge impact on the NFT market and the blockchain space more broadly.

The NFT market is going to expand

Opensea is currently the biggest NFT marketplace. It has approximately 400,000 users and saw transactions amounting to $3.5 billion worth of trading volume in August. Let’s compare that to Coinbase which has approximately 68,200,000 users. Clearly, not every person on Coinbase will buy an NFT, but there is clearly potential for the market to increase in size 2x, 10x, or even greater, almost overnight.

People will be able to discover NFTs more easily

As I wrote recently, discovering and learning about NFTs requires concerted effort. Coinbase has made it easy for millions of people to access cryptocurrencies and now it looks like it is going to do the same for NFTs.

Competition will encourage innovation

Opensea has made great strides in building its platform but it definitely has a long way to go. Coinbase’s entry into the market will mean that both platforms, and others, will be incentivised to build more secure and more user-friendly NFT buying experiences.

This is a vote of confidence in the future of blockchain technology

Coinbase is consolidating its position and expressing its confidence in the blockchain space. With both cryptocurrency and NFTs under its belt, the company will be well-placed to lead in the development of future innovations on the Ethereum blockchain and others. For example, blockchain based identity systems and the blockchain management of physical assets are both developments that could naturally emerge from the behaviours and trends we are seeing around NFTs.

Sign up to the waiting list to get early access to Coinbase NFT: Coinbase NFT Waiting List