Instagram leak may have revealed NFT plans

Silicon Valley insider Alessandro Paluzzi has revealed Instagram are working on a new NFT marketplace feature for the platform.

Whilst the feature hasn’t yet launched, the developer gave the game away in a series of tweets to add fuel to online speculation about Instagram’s latest plans.

Here are some of Paluzzi’s tweets exposing the Instangram scheme…

It appears the plans are aimed at encouraging the sale of digital art by allowing artists to showcase their work on Instagram, with the ‘Collectibles’ tag added to stories created by the artist.

During Instagram’s creators week at the beginning of June, CEO Adam Mosseri suggested the platform was looking to further monetise users’ experiences, in what now appears to be a hint towards NFTs.

In a discussion he said the next step was “for users to actually pay creators directly so whether it is gated content or subscriptions or tips, like badges, or other user payment-type products”.

This comes amid news that other leading social media platforms could be looking to incorporate large-scale monetisation updates. Twitter is reportedly keen to launch new services with Chipper Cash and Wealth Simple.

The market for NFT art has exploded this year, with NFT sales in excess of $2.5b – a huge increase from the $14m during the first-half of 2020.

One thing is clear, Instagram is trying to capture its slice of this new marketspace, and adoption by a platform of its colossal size will only help fuel the explosive growth of the NFT industry.

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