Instagram is preparing to add NFTs soon, reveals Mark Zuckerberg

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that its video and photo-sharing app, Instagram, is preparing to add non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to the platform.

“We’re working on bringing NFTs to Instagram in the near term,” Mark Zuckerberg reportedly said at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. Casey Newton, contributors for the Platformer newsletter, tweeted from the conference that Zuckerberg also said that he hoped in the next few months, Instagram users would be able to mint their own NFTs on the platform.

Last October, Meta famously changed its name from Facebook to focus on its metaverse-related projects. For the first time, its company reports for the last quarter of 2021 revealed that the financial details of its virtual and augmented reality R&D business, Reality Labs, showed losses of more than $10 billion. To be fair, though, Meta’s corner of the Metaverse is not live yet, so it’d be hard to profit from it.

This isn’t Meta’s first foray into a crypto-related project. In 2019, the company signaled plans to create “Libra,” later renamed “Diem,” a dollar-pegged stablecoin that failed due to a lack of regulatory approval and community opposition. The project was acquired by Silvergate Capital, although some former Meta employees are now looking to revive the open-source stablecoin by building their own network.

Following Twitter’s famous decision in January to add support for NFT profile pictures, social media companies have been looking to implement cryptocurrencies and NFTs into their platforms. Reddit implemented NFT avatars from its own collection, and adult site OnlyFans enabled NFT profile pictures in December 2020.

It’s not just social media giants looking to get in on the action offered by cryptocurrencies. Traditional financial firms are showing their interest in the space, with major credit card company, American Express, hinting at expanding into Metaverse, according to trademark filings.

Applications to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this week showed that American Express primed to offer virtual banking and exchange services, cryptocurrency services, and allow the use of its credit cards in the NFT marketplace.