Less than a year in, NFTs on Instagram and Facebook are dead.
In May 2022, Meta’s Instagram introduced the support for cryptocurrency-based digital collectibles or NFTs, and Facebook soon followed. And what started as a limited test was later expanded to all Facebook and Instagram users in the U.S., who were able to connect their digital wallets to Meta’s apps and share their beloved NFTs.
Now, however, the company is shutting the program down, with Meta’s Commerce and FinTech lead Stephane Kasriel sharing the news on Twitter. “We’re winding down digital collectibles (NFTs) for now to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses,” he wrote.
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Kasriel said that the company remains focused on building new ways for creators and businesses to “connect with their fans and monetize,” including messaging and monetization opportunities for Reels. The company will also continue to invest in fintech tools such as Meta Pay.
Meta was once seemingly all-in on crypto, but its ambitious Libra (later Diem) cryptocurrency was buried by regulators before it even began, and the company hasn’t had much luck with other crypto projects, such as its cryptocurrency wallet Novi which was shut down in July 2022.
It’s unclear how much traction its NFT products had. But Meta recently laid off 11,000 people, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying the plan is to shift company resources onto a “smaller number of high priority growth areas,” such as Meta’s ambitious vision for the Metaverse. It appears that NFTs were not among them.
