eBay took its biggest step into the world of digital collectibles today with news about the company acquiring NFT marketplace KnownOrigin† The online auction company is keeping its lips sealed on the deal’s value, but confirmed in the press release that the deal will close on June 21.
“This partnership will help us attract a new wave of NFT makers and collectors,” said David Moore, co-founder of KnownOrigin.
KnownOrigin describes itself as “one of the world’s first and largest NFT marketplaces”, and it currently ranks 12th in all-time trading volume for Ethereum-backed NFTs at $7.8 million. according to DappRadar† Higher-ranked, more popular marketplaces include OpenSea (No. 1) with an all-time trade value of $30.43 billion and Decentraland (No. 8) with $155.66 million.
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eBay started allowing NFT sales on its site last year. With the KnownOrigin acquisition, eBay has the ability to operate a true digital marketplace where NFT transactions can be both monitored and audited – not just offering fingers crossed that the seller transfers an NFT correctly to the buyer’s wallet. .
Currently, eBay approved sellers can list NFTs in the same format as a physical item, and many listings today share the details of the NFT coin number and which digital wallet the buyer needs to receive the transfer after the sale. eBay’s current NFT selling method also has some caveats, such as a $10,000 cap, a buy it now model (no bidding or best offers), and a requirement that the buyer and seller be in the same country. NFTs also cannot be sold together with a physical item.
That last caveat that you can’t associate a physical item with an NFT sale is the most intriguing, as eBay opened a new real vault earlier this month to protect physical collectibles, with the ability to allow immediate digital sales of the items. without ever handing them over. eBay declined to comment on whether there will be any integration between physical collectibles in the vault and NFTs going forward.
eBay has been pushing hard on its collectibles over the past year, extending its authenticity guarantee to ensure trading cards sold on eBay are not fake, and launching live auctions to showcase even more collectibles. Collectibles sales are at an all-time high as a result of the pandemic, and eBay is taking the opportunity to cover both digital and physical assets with the KnownOrigin acquisition and the eBay Vault — which at the time of writing are still not available. Place NFTs are eligible to be stored.
