The U.S.'s largest cryptocurrency exchange has just entered the NFT market...and it couldn't have come at a worse possible time.
Coinbase launched its NFT marketplace to the public on Wednesday, allowing anyone to sign up on the new platform. Day one did not go well.
When Bloomberg looked into how things were going yesterday at 5:15pm, only 110 transactions had been made. By the end of the day, according to crypto tracking platform Dune Analytics, there had only been 40 more. This amounted to less than US$75,000 in sales. The platform had 1,120 users at the close of the day.
Day two doesn't look like an improvement. At 5:15pm ET on Thursday, there had been approximately 107 transactions for a total of around US$119,500. Today's most recent user total, 1,215, suggests slow growth.
In contrast to Coinbase's platform, the most popular NFT marketplace, OpenSea, recorded US$124 million in transactions on May 3, according to Bloomberg.
While the NFT platform is now public, Coinbase says it's still in its beta testing phase. However, it should be noted that the platform went public with 972 users grandfathered in from its private testing phase.
And the current state of the NFT market doesn't offer much hope that things will get better soon. A recent Wall Street Journal report found that NFT sales have fallen 92 percent since their peak last year, to an average of 19,000 transactions per week. Active wallets fell to around 14,00 as well, a decline of 88 percent.
Coinbase originally announced plans for its NFT marketplace in October, but even by then it was late to the game. The Coinbase NFT platform opened to a waitlist of users in April, right before Wednesday's public launch. Analysts have estimated that Coinbase would need to sink US$300 million into its NFT marketplace this year.
It's clear that Coinbase has a long way to go before ever competing with OpenSea. Then again, it's also clear that the NFT marketplace has a long way to go to even make sense for Coinbase.
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