Breaking: Coinbase Is Launching an NFT Marketplace. Here's How to Sign Up

Last October, Coinbase announced its plans to start its own marketplace for users to trade and hold NFTs.

On Wednesday afternoon, Coinbase rolled out the first phase of its long-awaited non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace to compete with OpenSea and Rarity. In its official announcement, Coinbase stated that this initial beta test of its NFT exchange is only open to an undisclosed number of users who had already signed up on its waitlist for this service, which had more than 2.1 million potential users awaiting access at press time.

According to the statement, Coinbase plans to gradually increase waitlist access over time. For now, the beta testers can trade NFTs using any self-custody wallet, whether that’s the Coinbase Wallet or not. For a limited time, there will be no Coinbase transactions fees for NFT platform users. Coinbase is currently the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States and stated in its announcement that it wants to be a community hub for NFT creators and collectors.

Why is Coinbase expanding into NFTs?

While Coinbase claims that it wants to serve as an NFT community curator, the most obvious reason for its move into NFTs is money. According to the 2021 NFT Yearly Report, prepared and published by nonfungible.com, NFT sales topped $24.5 million in 2019, then grew 236% in 2020 to more than $82.5 million, and then going parabolic by an eye-popping 21,350% to more than $17.7 billion in 2021.

And there are no signs of NFT sales slowing down in 2022. In January 2022, the largest NFT platform -- OpenSea -- saw its own monthly NFT sales revenue exceed $5 billion that month. If OpenSea just maintains that pace, that platform alone would generate $60 billion in revenue this year.

Coinbase will soon be the dominant NFT platform

However, OpenSea's sales will likely start to decline now that Coinbase is setting up its own NFT shop. It's a virtual certainty that Coinbase will be the dominant player within the NFT market space. As of this writing, there are more than 2.1 million individuals on its waitlist to be part of the Coinbase NFT platform -- and people can continue to sign up for a spot in that virtual line. Additionally, Coinbase has 8.8 million active monthly users and 56 million verified users total.

And even though OpenSea is currently the top NFT marketplace, it only averages about 489,000 active monthly users, according to DappRadar -- which is only about 5.5% of Coinbase's monthly user base. The number of users are clearly in Coinbase's favor, it's just a matter of time before it assumes the top NFT trading spot.