FLOW is up 52.2% over the past 24 hours. 

FLOW Surges as Meta Expands NFT Rollout 

Flow appears to be benefiting from Meta’s big NFT play. 

Per data from CoinGecko, the NFT-focused blockchain’s FLOW token has jumped 52.2% in the past 24 hours. The token rallied Thursday afternoon minutes after Meta announced that it would expand its NFT feature to 100 countries and added Flow to its list of supported blockchains. 

Flow was launched by Dapper Labs, the blockchain development company behind hit NFT projects CryptoKitties and NBA Top Shot. Its backers include behemoths like Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures, and Digital Currency Group. 

Flow saw rapid growth in 2021 as NFTs boomed, though the high was short lived. FLOW peaked at $42.40 in April 2021 but failed to reach new highs after the market crashed. Save for a few blue chip collections like Bored Ape Yacht Club and Fidenza, the NFT market and NFT-focused projects like Flow have suffered in crypto’s months-long downturn. Even after today’s rally, it’s still about 93.2% short of its all-time high. 

Despite waning sentiment among collectors and artists, Meta has signaled that it’s ready to bet big on the digital collectibles space and broader Metaverse-related fields over recent months. Since rebranding from Facebook in October, the social media giant has revealed that it sunk $10 billion into building its vision for the Metaverse last year. The company’s latest quarterly earnings report revealed that it’s still hemorrhaging money through its Metaverse arm Reality Labs, posting a $2.8 billion second-quarter loss. 

Still, while Mark Zuckerberg is yet to see a return on his investment in the Metaverse, that hasn’t stopped the firm from venturing into the space. The Instagram NFT launch is a big first step, but Zuckerberg hinted earlier this year that a similar product could also go live on Facebook. He explained the company’s decision to pursue NFTs in May, saying in an interview that the company wants to support creators. “I think a big part of what we need to do is really lean into all of the different ways that creators could make money,” he said. 

The Instagram NFT feature will initially go live across Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and the Americas with support for assets on Ethereum, Polygon, and Flow. 

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned ETH, MATIC, some Otherside NFTs, and several other fungible and non-fungible cryptocurrencies.