Coinbase COIN Hits All-Time Low, Down 63% Since IPO

Coinbase stock has hit an all-time low just two days after it launched its Ethereum NFT marketplace. Since the launch, shares are down more than 15 percent and the price has dropped more than 47 percent since January.

Coinbase Plummets Despite New Developments

Coinbase shares on the Nasdaq slid down to US$131.14 hours after trading on April 22. The crypto exchange announced its plans to enter the NFT space in October last year, with over 1.5 million people signing up for the waitlist, and the beta version of the marketplace kicked off on April 20.

The launch, which had been hyped for over a year, failed to reverse Coinbase’s months-long slump, with the price almost halving since January.

Further Integration Planned Despite Lukewarm Reception

While everybody can access the website at the moment, with the beta launch only a select few clients can buy and sell Ethereum-based NFTs with payments in Ether. Coinbase plans to integrate other blockchains in the future along with unique features that would allow users to engage more. For now, though, it seems that Coinbase’s NFT marketplace has failed to generate much excitement despite entering a burgeoning space populated by other marketplaces such as OpenSea, Rarible, SuperRare and LooksRare.

What differentiates Coinbase’s marketplace from those of its competitors is that it emphasises communal experience, encouraging NFT artists and buyers to interact and connect with social features, much like Instagram. The platform, which has aggregated any NFTs for sale on the Ethereum blockchain across marketplaces, is still limited in terms of access and is slowly opening to its millions-long waitlist.

The downturn in prices comes at a bad time for Coinbase. The launch of its marketplace was initially planned for late 2021 and it has entered the red-hot NFT space just as it seems to be cooling down. Along with the price slump, Coinbase is also being dragged into a class action lawsuit for selling 79 “unregistered securities”.