Coinbase Global Co-Founder Brian Armstrong says the market for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) could rival or even be larger than the company's cryptocurrency business. That was a bold statement from Coinbase's chief executive officer, made on a conference call on Tuesday after the largest US digital-asset exchange reported third-quarter revenue of around $1.3 billion. The declaration helped to ease concern that revenue was below forecast even after a more than fivefold increase from a year earlier.

Coinbase plans to open its own NFT marketplace, where people will be able to trade digital art and other items, in the next quarter or two. The company wants to offer a one-stop experience for users where they can make purchases and store their holdings on a platform that would provide a social media experience more similar to Instagram than a traditional marketplace such as e-Bay.

Coinbase has received more than 2.5 million emails seeking to sign up for the marketplace since it was first announced in October. The biggest existing NFT marketplace, OpenSea, had around 236,000 unique user addresses interacting with it in the last 30 days, according to data tracker DappRadar. Coinbase is an investor in OpenSea.