Cryptocurrency exchange announces plans for NFT trading platform

Coinbase Global Inc.’s yet-to-be-launched platform for non-financial tokens is already a hotspot.

The crypto exchange’s NFT waiting list had more than a million registrants on its first day of opening, according to a source familiar with the situation. It’s unclear whether some of them were duplicates or spam, he said.

NFT trading could be a profitable business for Coinbase

Coinbase unveiled plans to launch its trading platform Tuesday, seeking to tap into one of the biggest trends in digital assets this year.

“We’re getting a lot of subscribers and seeing a huge load on our servers. The company is working hard to address this issue,” Sanchan Saxen, Coinbase’s vice president of products, wrote on Twitter.

According to the Nonfungible tracker, daily sales peaked around $268 million in late August, with some NFTs selling for $1 million in recent months.

Coinbase, which warned in August that user numbers were down at the start of the third quarter, is looking to diversify its revenue as competitors such as Robinhood Markets Inc. step up their efforts to attract cryptocurrency users.

According to Julie Chariell of Bloomberg Intelligence, NFTs are the next frontier for Coinbase and could become profitable business for the exchange next year. “Trading NFT with our 3% commission estimate will generate much more revenue per trading dollar, as well as less volatility in Coinbase operations than crypto trading platforms,” Chariell, a senior financial technology analyst, wrote in her report.