NFTs could be 'as big or bigger' than all crypto on Coinbase, CEO says

As Coinbase cryptocurrency exchange is preparing to roll out its own nonfungible token (NFT) platform soon, CEO Brian Armstrong has assessed the importance of the company’s upcoming NFT offering.

On Tuesday, Coinbase released its Q3 financial results, reporting $1.2 billion in revenues, which mostly comes from the platform’s transaction fees on trading cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH). The firm is the largest crypto exchange in the United States, with its COIN shares publicly traded on Nasdaq.

Coinbase's NFT offering would significantly boost the exchange's operations as the NFT platform could potentially flip Coinbase's entire existing cryptocurrency business. Armstrong made the statement speaking at a Tuesday conference call, Bloomberg reported.

“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,” Coinbase CEO said, adding that it “could be as big or bigger” than Coinbase’s cryptocurrency business.

Coinbase officially announced plans to launch its own NFT platform in mid-October, intending to allow its users to create, purchase, discover and showcase Ethereum-based NFTs. The service will provide a social media-like experience, enabling users to follow different profiles and receive updates.

As Coinbase expects to launch its NFT platform later this year, a wide number of people have already expressed willingness to try the offering. A few days after Coinbase started its NFT waitlist in October, more than 1 million people signed up for the platform.

The number of applicants has continued to grow rapidly as Coinbase has reportedly received over 2.5 million emails seeking to sign up for the marketplace so far. This is just a tiny portion of Coinbase’s total 68 million verified users and 8.8 million monthly active users as of Q2 2021.

OpenSea, the largest NFT marketplace in the world, processed over $1.7 billion worth of transactions over the past 30 days, with over 230,000 users interacting with its smart contracts over the period, according to data from the industry metrics provider DappRadar.

Related: ‘Overtime, we will see the NFT market broaden,’ says Ripple CTO David Schwartz

Coinbase is just one of many global crypto exchanges that plan or have already launched their NFT platforms amid the parabolic growth of the NFT industry. In September, Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto exchange FTX became the latest crypto platform to announce the launch of a native NFT marketplace. Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, debuted its own NFT platform in June.