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Of Course, Instagram is Doing NFTs…
You will soon be able to buy, sell, and mint NFTs on Instagram, according to Mark Zuckerberg
The relatively modern phenomenon of NFTs, while still occupying plenty of coverage in the press, seems to be dying down ever so slightly. Just a few months ago, you couldn’t open a website without seeing at least one headline that referred to NFTs.
As the NFT marketplace has evolved over the last couple of years, interest in these quirky digital assets has grown. Most people still have zero interest in NFTs as an investment but we do now live in a world where an NFT sold at a Christie’s auction for $69 million.
Plenty of tech companies, including Fortnite, have categorically stated that they have no plans to support or “do” NFTs. According to Fortnite’s CEO, the potential for its users to get scammed is just too big a risk at present. Not so much for Mark Zuckerberg, though – he recently discussed plans to bring NFTs to Instagram.
NFTs Are Coming To Instagram
Wherever there is a whiff of money, Zuckerberg will not be too far behind. After buying up most of the internet during the past decade, Mr. Social Network is now in the process of monetizing them, for better or worse.
Instagram, arguably The Zuck’s hottest property, has been through many changes under Facebook’s tenure, most of them bad, and the next phase in the photo app’s genesis appears to be NFTs. Here’s a statement from Mark Zuckerberg on Meta’s plans to bring NFTs to Instagram.
We’re working on bringing NFTs to Instagram in the near term. I’m not ready to kind of announce exactly what that’s going to be today. But over the next several months, the ability to bring some of your NFTs in, hopefully over time be able to mint things within that environment. 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. There’s like a bunch of technical things that need to get worked out before that’ll really be seamless to happen.”Mark Zuckerberg
So, there you have it: NFTs are coming to Instagram. Zuckerberg was also careful to remind people that Facebook’s Metaverse already has NFTs as if this is something that will magically draw millions of new users to Mark Zuckerberg’s Brave New Online World. I’m still very much not all interested in the metaverse.
How Will NFTs Work On Instagram?
As noted above, Meta – that’s what Facebook is now called FYI – has to figure out a bunch of technical stuff before NFTs will live on Instagram. It will first need to create a method for minting NFTs and tracking and storing tokens. This will be presumably done via the Ethereum blockchain.
Once this is in place, Instagram will, presumably, need some kind of marketplace where users can list, browse, and view current NFTs that are for sale. Again, how this will work remains to be seen. It could just work as an extension to Instagram, like Instagram Business accounts, for instance, only here you’ll have an Instagram NFT Creator account or something similar.
Once these pieces are in place, users will then be able to create and upload NFTs directly to Instagram and, once they’re added to the gram’s native marketplace, presumably start making sales. Zuckerberg seems to want to create an NFT marketplace within Instagram, a one-stop-shop for buying and selling NFTs if you will.
And given the size of Instagram’s user base – it is now well into the BILLIONS – this move could create big problems for already established NFT marketplaces like OpenSea, Axie Marketplace, and Rarible. I mean, how do you compete with a social network that has over a billion active users? The short answer is you don’t – you get destroyed, more or less, overnight.
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