NFTs have officially made their way to the mainstream. Meta, the recently renamed parent company of Facebook, is planning its arrival in the NFT market, a $40-plus billion opportunity.
According to The Financial Times, Facebook and Instagram developers are in the process of building features that will make it easy for users to display, mint, or sell their NFT creations, which often take the form of digital art.
Meta's plans include a tool that lets users show off their digital avatar NFTs as profile pics, a trend that has already caught on like wildfire on Twitter. In addition, Zuckerberg's team is exploring the launch of an NFT marketplace, where creators can trade their masterpieces for a profit.
Meta (FB) shares up over 2% on the day. Investors have been fleeing tech stocks of late amid the expected onslaught of interest rate hikes, and the NFT development gave them something to celebrate
Facebook and Instagram will soon be NFT friendly, it's likely other technology companies follow suit, either with their own sets of digital collectibles or a marketplace platform like Meta might be creating to go up against OpenSea or Zora, or even Coinbase.
Meta is actually behind its own digital currency, called Diem. This stablecoin, which was rebranded from Libra and pegged to fiat currencies, is years in the making and has yet to see the light of day. The Diem ecosystem is more of a payments platform, and it includes a digital wallet dubbed Novi, formerly known as Calibra.
It was all designed to feed into Facebook's metaverse ambitions. But David Marcus, a PayPal alum who was the head honcho of Facebook's Diem project, resigned from Meta at the end of last year.
Zuckerberg is probably a.) wishing he never attempted to create a competing digital currency to bitcoin or b.) hoping that the world forgets. Maybe even both. Perhaps he is trying to save face in the blockchain community with NFTs, which seems to be a safer bet.