Amazon’s long-awaited foray into the Metaverse

Amazon has recently announced the opening of its very own NFT marketplace on April 24 2023, as part of the company’s plans to expand its e-commerce empire.

The marketplace will start by offering 15 NFT collections, available through Amazon’s website.

But what makes the introduction of this new marketplace so significant from existing NFT Marketplaces?

Amazon’s NFT marketplace will allow users to acquire NFTs using traditional methods, as opposed to crypto wallets.

Buyers will be able to link their NFTs to real-world objects. Yahoo Finance Reports that post-launch, Amazon customers will be able to purchase fashion-orientated NFTs that are linked to physical clothing too.

Whilst Amazon’s move is a milestone for the NFT market, several challenges will need to be overcome in order to guarantee the success of this new marketplace. Some of these include volatility, competition, and regulatory concerns. For example, NFTs themselves are highly volatile, and have no guarantee of maintaining their value, which could pose risks to Amazon’s customers.

Additionally, there are already established NFT marketplaces, with platforms like Opensea having about 121 million visitors per month. This could result in Amazon having some robust competition with current NFT market leaders, since Amazon has the potential to reach a vast target market, due to its 200 million Prime Holders.

We are yet to see how well the E-commerce giant’s NFT marketplace does upon its launch. They’ve had all this time to formulate this idea, so Amazon must have something interesting in store. Until then one thing is certain, Amazon’s foray into NFTs means it is well on its way to entering the Web3 ecosystem.