The new NFT marketplace of US-based video-game retailer GameStop has already seen over US $3.5 million worth of trading volumes in less than a week of its launch on Monday. The NFT marketplace has already outperformed Coinbase NFT, which was launched with lot of hype in April and the waitlist for Coinbase NFT platform reaching more than three million users.
Both the platforms are being in the Beta phase and are not open to all creators and artists. The Coinbase NFT marketplace has recorded an all-time trading volume of around 1,704 ETH, valued at around US $1.8 million, despite being around for over two months.
GameStop launched with the pledge to “return power to the players” through low transaction fees. It has already reported over 3,000 ETH worth of trading volumes or around US $3.5 million worth of Ether. That volume account only for the top 50 collections. The actual figure could be much higher.
With a royalty rate of 2.25% per sale, GameStop’s new NFT marketplace has generated around US $67,500 in revenue for the company. Although that is not game-changing but is more than expected, considering it was launched only few days ago and in the midst of a downturn in the crypto markets, which has seen dwindling interests in NFT and tanking cryptocurrencies value. Ether, with which most NFT are purchased, is down nearly 70% since the beginning of the year.
GameStop hopes to compete with OpenSea, the world’s largest NFT marketplace where about US $17 billion has been spent on Ethereum-based NFT this year. OpenSea takes a 2.5% cut out of every NFT sold on its platform, which means it would have netted a revenue of around US $425 million in the last seven months.
The business of GameStop, the world’s largest video game retailer, has struggled over the past decade, as people increasingly buy games online. With a customer base in a flux, GameStop started eyeing the NFT market and now has plans to expand the offerings available on its NFT marketplace. The platform currently provides support for only artwork NFT, but is planning to launch a collection of gaming NFT that can be used as collectibles within play-to-earn gaming ecosystem.
GameStop NFT also have plans to eventually get into Web3 gaming and has already struck a partnership with Immutable, a company that specializes in blockchain gaming. The two have offered a US $100 million grant or a token incentive fund to Web3 developers that join the platform.
GameStop’s NFT marketplace is Ethereum-based, meaning it does not sell NFT built on other blockchains. It is banking on its existing customer base to dabble in NFT trading, as the new marketplace does not offer blue-chip collections which are popular among NFT traders but unaffordable to most people.
The latter could be seen as one of the platform’s major drawbacks, because customers cannot buy, sell or trade NFT that were minted outside the platform, although users still have the capability of seeing NFT in the wallet bought on other platforms.
Nevertheless, the platform has more than 200 collections and over 53,000 NFT available for purchase. Customers will be able to buy, sell and trade NFT of video game products, including clothes, weapons and traits of the various player avatars on the GameStop’s NFT marketplace.
