eBay Dips Its Fingers Into The NFT Sea, Allows Sales On The Platform

eBay dips its fingers into the NFT sea as it started allowing sales on the platform despite already being plenty of auction houses like Sotheby on the market. In our latest cryptocurrency news, we are reading more about the latest venture.

The everyday auction house eBay dips its fingers in the NFT world as they are the first traditional e-commerce company to announce the intent to integrate NFT support on the platform. Jordan Sweetnam who is an SVP and GM for eBay’s North American market, said in a statement that in the upcoming months, eBay will add even more capabilities that will bring blockchain-driven collectibles to the platform. With every initial entry on the platform, eBay anticipates adding an NFT inventory that will be available to sellers that meet the company’s initial criteria which is yet to be released. There is broad speculation that an NFT authentication protocol could be implemented.

The competition on the NFT market has been heating up and the traditional NFT focused marketplaces like Nifty Gateway, Rarible, OpenSean and more, have been the industry leaders. However, Binance announced an intent to open an NFT marketplace and now eBay joined in. The company added the new programs, policies, and tools that could be implemented to address the long-term engagement with NFTs on the platform as they have increased in popularity recently with NBA Top Shot moments being listed on the platform for a few months. While Top Shot sales are the centralized sort to speak, eBay became host to secondary sales. Today, you see find various NFTs from MLB Top Cards, VeVe NFT, and Top Shot as well. The new announcement will formalize eBay’s process around addressing how the NFTs are listed.

Rising NFT star Beeple already listed his first NFT in 2020 on Nifty Gateway and sold the work for about 0.25 ETH. However, by the first quarter of the new year, Beeple sold a record high of $38,000 via the Christies auction. Beeple was surprised himself as he made headlines for his appearance on CNN where he stated that the NFT hype has a few elements of a bubble. The NFT came a week after the company announced that it was open to the possibility of accepting crypto as a payment method.

Crypto acceptance on eBay has been speculation for a few years with little traction-gaining until recently.