{"id":9790,"date":"2022-06-23T17:53:34","date_gmt":"2022-06-23T22:53:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/?p=9790"},"modified":"2022-06-23T17:53:35","modified_gmt":"2022-06-23T22:53:35","slug":"i-paid-50-for-a-superhero-bunny-on-coinbases-new-nft-marketplace-and-saw-how-it-could-give-rivals-like-opensea-a-run-for-their-money","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/?p=9790","title":{"rendered":"I paid $50 for a superhero bunny on Coinbase&#8217;s new NFT marketplace \u2014 and saw how it could give rivals like OpenSea a run for their money"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<ul><li>I used Coinbase&#8217;s new feature that lets you buy and sell NFTs.<\/li><li>It&#8217;s designed to take a bite out of the market that OpenSea has long dominated.<\/li><li>But, like OpenSea, the feature made me wonder what the point was of NFTs in the first place.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>A new way to buy and sell NFTs is now available for the masses, and it&#8217;s run by one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/nft.coinbase.com\/\">Coinbase&#8217;s NFT<\/a>&nbsp;service is still in beta mode, and the company debuted it in April for a limited number of select users before opening it up for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Its launch comes at a precarious time for the crypto giant \u2014&nbsp; it saw&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/cryptocurrency-technology-earnings-b13ce487cf95ccc0df2b8a69279bf8e8#:~:text=Coinbase%20reported%20a%20%24430%20million,19%25%20from%20the%20fourth%20quarter.\">half its value<\/a>&nbsp;shaved off within one week in early May,&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/inside-coinbase-layoffs-crypto-employees-spend-salaries-overhire-bitcoin-2022-6\">recently laid off 18% of its employees<\/a>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wired.com\/story\/coinbase-rescind-job-offers\/\">rescinded job offers<\/a>, and the market at large is, of course, in an historic downturn that has many questioning the fate of decentralized finance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Needless to say, it&#8217;s not the best time for the space. But that didn&#8217;t stop Coinbase&#8217;s NFT shop launch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I tried it out and bought a $50 cartoon apart of the so-called SuperBunnies collection, one with &#8220;rare, valiant superheroes sworn to defend the metaverse.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.businessinsider.com\/how-to-buy-nfts-on-opensea-2022-3\">the $103 cartoon pig NFT I bought on OpenSea<\/a>&nbsp;in March, the purchase made me wonder what purpose NFTs truly serve outside of mere speculation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2>There&#8217;s no app yet \u2014 you need Coinbase Wallet<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>There is no Coinbase NFT app per se. Instead, you&#8217;ll need to have the Coinbase Wallet app downloaded (as well as the main Coinbase app, where you buy and sell crypto.) Luckily for Coinbase, plenty of potential customers already do.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the wallet app, click on the four-square icon at the center bottom, and you&#8217;ll see a banner that reads &#8220;Coinbase NFT.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can also use the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/nft.coinbase.com\/\">website version<\/a>&nbsp;to peruse NFTs, which is what I chose to do \u2014 you just have to confirm that it&#8217;s you on your phone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The first thing I noticed and liked was a toggle that allowed me to scroll through the NFTs and see their prices in USD, not in ether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There were Discover and Shop tabs, so you can filter by NFTs that are for sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I saw lots of spin-offs of the famous Bored Ape Yacht Club collection,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/markets.businessinsider.com\/news\/currencies\/bored-ape-yacht-club-nft-sales-1-billion-opensea-bayc-2022-1\">which has grossed about $1 billion in sales.<\/a>\u00a0There were Mutant Ape Yacht Club, Crypto Apes, Animated Bored Apes, and Bored Bears, to name a few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the most expensive NFTs I found was one priced at $15,568 from&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/nft.coinbase.com\/nft\/ethereum\/0x282bdd42f4eb70e7a9d9f40c8fea0825b7f68c5d\/6545\">Crypto Punks.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I eventually settled on one from the SuperBunnies collection, admittedly choosing one of the least expensive NFTs. Mine, &#8220;Light Super Bunny #2894,&#8221; has &#8220;unimpressed&#8221; eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As a launch special, Coinbase said it wouldn&#8217;t charge any transaction fees, otherwise known as gas fees, for a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/blog.coinbase.com\/gm-coinbase-nft-is-now-in-beta-25e6c052aa43\">&#8220;limited time.&#8221;<\/a>&nbsp;These fees can be sizable and add a good chunk to the final price tag. For example, I previously bought an NFT on OpenSea that cost about $50, but I paid $100 overall because of these fees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, the limited special appears to have expired \u2014 there were still network fees ranging from $14 to $18, raising the total cost of the $32 NFT to almost $50.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This friction felt familiar: the need to go buy more ether to cover the cost of the fees, wait for it to process, and then finally buy the NFT.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2>NFT hype aside, Coinbase is now an even bigger player in the game<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Proponents typically say NFTs empower creators to more easily make a living from their work since blockchain technology gives them more direct access to customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But at the end of the day, NFTs are largely speculative digital assets, ones that buyers hope will skyrocket in value so they&#8217;ll come into a windfall of cash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Still, the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/markets.businessinsider.com\/news\/currencies\/nft-market-41-billion-nearing-fine-art-market-size-2022-1\">$41 billion market<\/a>\u00a0has its followers, and Coinbase&#8217;s foray into the NFT trading space signals that it will likely remain one of the major players in the world of Defi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I used Coinbase&#8217;s new feature that lets you buy and sell NFTs. It&#8217;s designed to take a bite out of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3423,254,3421,3424],"tags":[3426,888,3427],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9790"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9790"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9790\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9791,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9790\/revisions\/9791"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.jlbn.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}