NFTs Coming to Instagram
Mark Zukerberg, Ceo of Instagram's parent company Meta, announced on Tuesday that non-fungible tokens will be coming to the popular social media app.
Zuck made the announcement speaking at a South by South West event, but he didn't provide a concrete date on when the NFTs were supposed to drop on Instagram.
The idea has been floating around for most of the past two years, with many hoping they will be given the ability to mint as well as share NFTs already within their collection.
Zuckerberg said during the conference that he hopes to one day be able to mint the clothing of his own digital avatar as an NFT, but made clear that there was a long way to go before the technology could accomplish such a feat.
This will not be the first time the Ceo of Meta has dipped his toes into the crypto space, back in 2019 he infamously attempted to launch a digital currency named Libra (later changed to Diem) but this venture failed massively in the face of a giant political and regulatory backlash.
Just months after the announcement, many founding members of the Libra Association left the project, with some citing the pressure from U.S Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Brian Schatz (D-HI). As of January 2022, the stable coin was be deemed dead.
As of October 2021, Facebook has been rebranded to Meta, saying the rebrand was the first step in the company's pivot towards a metaverse focus.
Investors did not take too keenly to the rebrand and refocus to the metaverse. Since the announcement, Meta’s shares have sunk more than 20%
Tuesday's news of NFTs appearing on Instagram seemed to cause a jolt in investor's confidence. Meta’s shares finished up around 3% for the day.
As NFTs see a bit of a slower month in trading volume, many question whether the NFT craze was just that a craze. This news can be seen as an arbiter of hope for those individuals, a platform such as Instagram, which has famously had a weak crypto community, will now host the hotly debated tech that is an NFT, potentially leading to many new investors who would not have had exposure without this integration.