Key takeaways:
- Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg appeared at this year’s SXSW conference and revealed that Instagram is working on adding NFTs to its platform
- The exact timeline and scope of the new offering is yet to be announced
- Zuckerberg has said that over time NFT mining on the Instagram platform would “hopefully” be possible
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says Instagram will be adding NFT functionality in the coming months
Speaking at the South by Southwest (SXSW) conference, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed that the popular photo and video-sharing app Instagram would soon receive non-fungible token (NFT) functionality.
The exact scope of the new offering is currently being kept under wraps. However, Zuckerberg did hint at an approximate rollout timeline and said that native Instagram NFT minting might be in the pipeline:
“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.”
The announcement of Instagram’s NFTs comes less than six months after Facebook famously rebranded to Meta, showcasing its commitment to the growing metaverse sector. Investment banking giant JPMorgan recently conducted a study that showed that the market cap of tokens in major metaverse platforms surged by more than 700% after Facebook’s rebranding.
Meta’s rival Twitter has also been deepening its ties to the blockchain space. The social media platform has added support for Bitcoin and Ethereum tips in recent months and recently unveiled an NFT profile verification feature that allows users to verify the ownership of NFTs they use as a profile picture.
