Mark Zuckerberg Announces NFTs Are Coming To Instagram

Mark Zuckerberg announces NFTs are coming to Instagram and said he envisions users being able to mint the NFTs of the clothes worn by their digital avatars so let’s read further in today’s latest crypto news.

Mark Zuckerberg announces NFTs are coming to Instagram but he didn’t quite specify when that might happen. The CEO of META confirmed that the non-fungible tokens or NFTs will be coming into the picture for the app. He made the announcement during the SXSW conference but didn’t provide a date for when the new feature might drop on Instagram. Rumors of the news have been circling for months with many predicting that the users will be able to mint the new NFTs on the app and then share those that are already in their collection.

At #SXSW, Mark Zuckerberg just said that “hopefully” in the coming months you’ll be able to mint NFTs within Instagram

— Casey Newton (@CaseyNewton) March 15, 2022

During his speech, Zuckerberg said he hopes one day that the users will be able to mint the clothes of their own digital avatars as NFTs but then admitted there’s more work to do before this can happen. This is not Zuckerberg’s first entry into blockchain technology. Back in 2019, the CEO tried to launch a digital currency called Libra but the effort was turned to nothing in the face of massive political and regulatory blowback.

A few of the founding members of the so-called Libra Association left the project in months of the announcement after the pressure from the US senators Sherrod Brown and Brian Shatz and by January 2022, Libra dubbed Diem was pronounced dead. During a virtual event last October, Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will be rebranding to META and said its focus will be to bring the Metaverse to life and to help more people connect.

The investors reacted poorly to the reading plans of Facebook and pivot to the metaverse but since the announcement, META’s shares tanked by 20%. The news of the Instagram NFTs appeared to trigger almost no response from investors and the shares of META closed up nearly 3% on teh day when the overall market was up about the same.

As previously reported, Instagram banned Mark Cuban-backed NFT account amid controversies of posting sponsored content without proper disclosure.  The account boasted 1.7 million followers and a blue verified checkmark whcih became a subject of a viral Twitter thread and accused the account of posting sponsored content while advertising NFT collections without disclosing the posts as ads.