While speaking at SXSM, Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company plans to introduce NFTs into Instagram in the “near term.”

Figure. 1. Mark Zuckerberg Confirms NFTs are Coming to Instagram

While the Meta CEO and founder didn’t offer a ton of detail, he characterized the integration of non-fungible tokens into the company’s photo and video sharing app as something on the way once the Instagram team works out some of the technical challenges.

“We are working on bringing NFTs to Instagram in the near term,” Zuckerberg said in a conversation with Shark Tank’s Daymond John. “I’m not ready to announce exactly what that’s going to be today, but, over the next several months, the ability to bring some of your NFTs in, and hopefully over time be able to mint things within that environment.” [1]

According to Casey Newton of The Verge, Zuckerberg added that he was hopeful that NFTs would be on Instagram in the next few months. While Zuckerberg did not detail any specifics on how NFTs would be integrated into the platform, he did notably suggest that it would allow current NFT owners to show off artwork they had purchased and that the full vision for them on Instagram includes the ability to mint new NFTs in the app. Zuckerberg also said that NFTs would play a major role in his vision of the metaverse.

“I would hope that you know, the clothing that your avatar is wearing in the metaverse, you know, can be basically minted as an NFT and you can take it between your different places,” he continues, according to Engadget. “There’s like a bunch of technical things that need to get worked out before that’ll really be seamless to happen.”

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, Open Sea, 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 stable coin, 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.[3]

References:

1. https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/15/instagram-nfts/
2. https://petapixel.com/2022/03/15/mark-zuckerberg-confirms-nfts-are-coming-to-instagram/
3. https://fortune.com/2022/03/15/mark-zuckerberg-instagram-nft-marketplace-mint/

Cite this article:

Sri Vasagi K (2022), NFT marketplace are coming soon in Instagram, AnaTechMax. pp.44