- Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong believes the market for NFTs could rival or even outperform the company’s entire crypto market.
- NFTs are “going to be a very large area for crypto in the future, and it already is today,” said Armstrong.
- Armstrong expects NFTs to boost the company’s operations.
Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong believes the market for NFTs could rival or even outperform the company’s entire crypto market.
On a conference call last week, Armstrong, CEO of the largest crypto exchange in the US, showed his excitement about NFTs, saying that they “could be as big or bigger” than Coinbase’s crypto business. “We are very excited about NFTs, this is going to be a very large area for crypto in the future, and it already is today,” he said.
The remarks come at a time when the crypto exchange is preparing to launch its NFT marketplace. In mid-October, Coinbase unveiled its NFT plans after the cryptocurrency derivatives exchange FTX announced its NFT marketplace.
“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 the NFTs,” Coinbase said in an announcement. While the company did not disclose when the NFT platform might go live, it has opened a waitlist and urged interested users to join for early access.
NFTs to Boost Coinbase Operations
Last week, Coinbase released its financial filings for the third quarter, reporting $1.2 billion in revenues. However, this was a 75% decrease in net income and falling 30% short of FactSet estimates. This was largely due to the lack of volatility in Q3, which resulted in a sharp decrease in trading volume over almost all crypto exchanges.
Nevertheless, Coinbase expects the new NFT platform would considerably expand its operations, as there has been significant interest. Since the launch of the NFT wait list, over 2.5 million users have signed up for the program, with the number of applicants continuing to grow regularly.
In comparison, the leading NFT marketplace OpenSea has seen around 230,000 users interacting with its platform over the last 30 days, 10x less than the users who joined for Coinbase’s NFT platform. Despite this, OpenSea’s trading volume continues to remain unparalleled, with over $1.7 billion worth of transactions being processed in the last month alone.
NFTs Are Booming
With the recent spike in interest around the market for non-fungible tokens, more analysts are declaring bullish views. For instance, Activate Consulting, a prominent consulting firm, expects businesses of all sorts to adopt NFTs by 2022 and believes digital collectibles will go mainstream by that time. In its 2022 outlook, Activate said:
As more consumer time migrates to digital experiences and interest grows in the metaverse, we believe that every technology and media company will need an NFT strategy.
Similarly, research by the blockchain platform Stratis reveals that NFTs are the future of gaming. “We commissioned this research to solidify what we already assumed — that blockchain and NFTs are the future of video games,” said Chris Trew, CEO of Stratis.
