With Zuckerberg’s recent unveiling of changing Facebook’s name to Meta, and making a 50 million bet on Web3, one has to ask, are NFT’s mainstream yet? Let’s take a look.
Over the course of the year, social media mentions of NFTs have been on the rise. But what does this look like when comparing it to the crypto ecosystem?
As of October 30 2021, there are roughly over 200,000 active wallets participating in the NFT ecosystem. Coinbase, one of the most popular exchanges, has ~68 million verified users. For those that are already invested and believe in crypto, that’s not even 1 percent of this user base participating. We are still early.
If you’re involved in the NFT space, this is a phrase you’ll often see. Are we early or are we in an echo chamber, a bubble, or the top of the market?
We’re spending more and more time of our time online, where there’s often a blend between physical and virtual reality. One example most people use daily is navigating through Google Maps. You are walking or driving somewhere in the physical realm, but your digital GPS is what guides you. In a tech saturated world, is it more plausible that we will become more or less digitally immersed?
Those that have already embraced NFTs, including Zuckerberg, are leaning towards increased immersion. However, the difference is that Zuckerberg has essentially limitless resources to make this a reality. As the old adage goes, you can’t cuck the Zuck.
As more of the public embraces this, it would make sense that digital authentication, identity and ownership will become increasingly important in a digitally immersed world.
NFT’s are fundamental piece to this, and it’s not just Facebook that has realized. Both traditional and tech companies have been moving towards integrating NFT’s into our daily lives.
Here’s a brief timeline of what’s transpired so far in 2021:
March
Christie’s, a world-famous auction house, hosts the first NFT artwork auction and sells for $69 million with 22 million people tuning in.
April
Sotheby’s, another famous auction house, follows suit with an NFT sale of their own, totalling $17 million.
May
GameStop stealthily develops an NFT Marketplace
August
VISA, one of the world’s largest card payment and financial services company, purchases a Cryptopunk for $150,000.
September
Mastercard follows VISA’s suit, and offers an NFT to a lucky cardholder.
Twitter plans to integrate NFT profile verification and shows a demonstration
October
VISA launches an NFT support program for digital artists
Disney announcing official NFT collectables for Disney, Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars.
Coinbase opens up a waitlist for their NFT marketplace, with already over a million in sign-ups.
Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit also implies Reddit will be integrating NFT’s.
As you can see, NFTs have already started to permeate into a variety of different fields, allowing for new opportunities that weren’t available before. In the grand scheme of things, mainstream adoption just isn’t there yet. What is clear, is that NFTs are here to stay and companies are still trying to figure out how to seamlessly integrate them into the real world.