Coinbase announces it will let users buy, sell, and showcase Ethereum-based NFTs by the end of the year
they are “digital goods” after all, and subject to the 30 percent IAP fees. Dying to know what Coinbase will try and do here https://www.theverge.com/... Li Jin / @ljin18 : Coinbase is speaking my language https://blog.coinbase.com/... https://twitter.com/... Grady Booch / @grady_booch : Happy to see how Web 3.0 absolutely destroys the centralization of power. Oh. Wait. https://twitter.com/... @saradietschy : The great convergence will be paypal, square, venmo, cashapp, coinbase, gemini, opensea, niftygateway, robinhood, public, etc etc all offering the same services and then I guess it's a race to who acquires a bank charter first but then will that matter?? Ciniz.Btc / @screentimes : can't wait to see the fees https://twitter.com/... @senorpng : Massive news. Given Coinbase's invitation of regulatory scrutiny, this could also lead to some answers on the government's view on NFTs. Either way: strap in https://twitter.com/... @nathancroth : 68,200,000 coinbase users 400,000 opensea users 0.59% of coinbase users own an nft. You are on the left-most end of the left-most group. You are an innovator among innovators. You're so early. https://twitter.com/... Soumya / @soumyazen : NFT to jpeg what Internet was to AltaVista . NFT will enable the Metaverse economy and this is a big step towards democratizing access to that . This is not about jpegs https://techcrunch.com/... Leo Polovets / @lpolovets : The mantra used to be “large companies are not nimble or effective enough to be a threat to fast growing startups.” I wonder if that will change with the newest generation of big tech companies (Coinbase, Stripe, Robinhood, etc). https://techcrunch.com/... @garrytan : FWIW I think OpenSea's UX/eng execution has been only OK, so to see Coinbase come into the space is going to clean up a lot of what remains broken in NFTs Ryan Freitas / @ryanchris : My team stays busy. https://blog.coinbase.com/... Mayes.eth / @alexandermayes : Exciting announcement! I can finally talk about what I'm working on at @coinbase. Join the waitlist. 😉 https://blog.coinbase.com/... Ryan Freitas / @ryanchris : Been excited about this for months. We are just getting started. HUGE thanks to Mayes for joining up and getting me settled in on this 🎢. https://twitter.com/... Fanchain / @_fanchain : This is going to blow the audience right open https://www.coindesk.com/... James Camp / @jamesoncamp : Y'all have no idea what this means for NFTs This is the magical on-ramp for normies we have all been waiting for https://twitter.com/... @economist : Who remembers when OpenSea had a near monopoly on NFT secondary market trades and squandered the opportunity with complacency? https://twitter.com/... CryptoAmsterdam / @damskotrades : That's a lot of wallets from ‘beginners’ who might normally not be able / take the time to set up Metamask entering the NFT space. Bullish! https://twitter.com/... @nftcrypto3 : I am actually more bullish on coinbase NFT than either @binance or @FTX_Official Why? Because those 2 want to use NFT to push their own ecosystem & coin (BSC & SOL). Whereas @coinbase does not, and will be focusing on ETH, the dominant market & brainpower https://twitter.com/... Jeremiah Owyang / @jowyang : Coinbase is launching an NFT marketplace, where else will we see this? my predictions: -Adobe Behance -Amazon -Ebay -Getty -Facebook Marketplace Also, our NFT purchases will display on: Twitter (underway), TikTok (partial), Facebook, & Linkedin. https://techcrunch.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Coinbase had previously been described as shifting institutional attention toward crypto-native firms, while a Coinbase outlook envisioned a larger, less-regulated crypto-to-crypto economy. Adding Ethereum NFT trading and display tools extends its role from an exchange toward a consumer gateway for those assets. Later, Coinbase built on that broader ecosystem direction with the launch of its Base Layer 2 network and a public Base mainnet with more than 100 apps and service providers.
First-order effects
- Coinbase users are slated to gain a single venue to buy, sell, and showcase Ethereum-based NFTs rather than using the exchange solely for crypto trading.
- Coinbase adds an NFT-focused product surface that can keep Ethereum asset activity and user attention inside its own service.
Second-order effects
- The move makes Coinbase's consumer offering more directly comparable with the converging set of finance and crypto services named in the coverage, including Gemini, Robinhood, and NFT-focused marketplaces.
- An NFT marketplace requires Coinbase to compete for both buyers and sellers, making the quality of its marketplace experience as consequential as its existing exchange access.
Third-order effects
- Coinbase's later Base rollout suggests a longer shift from acting principally as a trading venue toward operating an ecosystem that combines asset access, applications, and onchain infrastructure.
- If exchanges continue adding application-layer services, competition in crypto will increasingly center on retaining users across multiple activities rather than on trading alone.
The trend: Crypto exchanges are evolving into broader consumer and developer ecosystems that bundle trading with onchain applications and infrastructure.