Coinbase’s NFT marketplace is off to a lackluster start – TechCrunch

It’s been a little over two weeks since Coinbase launched its highly anticipated NFT marketplace for select waitlisted beta users. Earlier this week, the company opened the service up to the public – and digital collectibles trading has been sluggish.

Coinbase’s exchange has 24-hour volume of $3.2 billion and almost 2.5 million weekly visits, according to CoinMarketCap. Since launching on April 20, Coinbase NFT volume has reached sales worth $668,668 across a small pool of 1,287 users, according to data on Dune Analytics compiled by user hildobby.

So why isn’t a larger part of its exchange’s overall volume and user base flowing into its NFT marketplace?

Although Coinbase’s NFT platform is fairly new, for the second-largest crypto exchange globally, you’d expect better performance.

A source close to Coinbase, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, said that the Dune Analytics data doesn’t provide an overall number of how many people have signed up for the platform.

“There’s that one stat that says Coinbase NFT total users, and it has been misrepresented as the number of people on the platform,” the source said. “That’s not how many people have signed up — that’s how many people have made a transaction.”

In comparison, OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace globally, had nearly $3.5 billion in NFT volume across roughly 350,000 users since April 20. OpenSea’s volume was over 500,000% higher than Coinbase NFTs during that time frame.

OpenSea also makes up the majority share of NFT marketplace volume, followed by NFT marketplaces LooksRare and Magic Eden, data from The Block showed. But even stacked up against second-place LooksRare, which had $1.5 billion in NFT volume across over 21,000 users since April 20, Coinbase’s NFT marketplace has been fairly stagnant.

Coinbase NFT opened its marketplace to everyone on May 4. Since then, the number of users has fallen every day, hildobby’s data shows.

“The anticipation of where this should be right now has not matched expectations,” Nick O’Neill, CEO and co-founder of The Nifty, said to TechCrunch. “The product is overdeveloped; we see this happen all the time.”