Instagram is currently working on bringing NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, to a wider audience as its parent company, Meta, continues to expand into the metaverse.
The mainstream adoption of NFTs
Instagram has announced it is exploring its possibilities in bringing NFTs to a wider audience. It comes after its parent company Facebook rebranded to Meta in an attempt to expand into the metaverse. It will pave the way for customers to eventually bid for NFTs directly on the image-sharing app.
NFTs have recently emerged as a form of modern art or video collectables and double as a digital key to unlocking the metaverse by unlocking ownership of a virtual world.
Instagram CEO, Adam Mosseri, confirmed: “Nothing to announce yet, but we are definitely actively exploring NFTs and how we can make them more accessible to a wider audience. I think it’s an interesting place where we can play, and also a way to hopefully help creators.”
An exploration into the metaverse
In the past year alone, NFTs have experienced a rapid surge in popularity with total assets of over $12 billion (£9 billion) which has been largely driven by a number of global brands making a push into the virtual universe.
In July, Facebook made waves across the world when it announced it would rebrand as Meta in an attempt to further focus on the ever-growing metaverse where users can live, play, work, and interact with fellow virtual avatars. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the time: “From now on, we’ll be metaverse first, not Facebook first.”
It has, however, led a growing number of cryptocurrency-focused companies to worry whether their efforts in expanding into the metaverse will be overshadowed by global tech companies that currently dominate social media but as public knowledge of the metaverse continues to grow, only time will tell.
