While speaking at the South by Southwest conference, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Instagram users might soon be able to mint nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, on the social media platform.
“We’re working on bringing NFTs to Instagram in the near term,” the Meta founder and CEO reportedly said at SXSW during the “Into the Metaverse: Creators, Commerce, and Connection” session. He then clarified that he was “not ready to announce exactly what that’s going to be today.”
Zuckerberg also reportedly mentioned he hopes avatar clothing in the metaverse could be minted as NFTs, too, which is already a common occurrence in the overall space and lucrative business for blockchain-based, play-to-earn companies.
But again, Zuckerberg admitted there’s “a bunch of technical things to be worked out.”
This isn’t super surprising. In January, the Financial Times reported that Meta had discussed launching an NFT marketplace, but that all talks were in very early stages. And in 2021, Zuckerberg also mentioned that his planned metaverse would be ideal to support digital goods.
The market for NFTs has surged—in the past 30 days alone, OpenSea, one of the largest NFT marketplaces, saw over $2 billion in volume, according to DappRadar.
While Meta, formerly Facebook, was early in attempting to create its own stablecoin, known as Libra, that initiative ultimately failed. Meta ended up selling the cryptocurrency venture in January for $200 million, and Zuckerberg’s remarks on NFTs indicate he’s looking for a success in the blockchain space.
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