As the cryptocurrency market continues to ripple, Meta has announced that it is cutting off support for digital collections (NFT) on its platform less than a year after its launch.
On Monday, local time, the social media company’s head of fintech Stephane Kasriel tweeted, “We are currently phasing down our digital collections (NFT) to focus on other ways to support creators, individuals and businesses.”
“We will continue to invest in the fintech tools that people and businesses will need in the future. We are simplifying the payment process with Meta Pay, making checkout and payments easier, and investing in messaging payment capabilities on Meta,”
Last year, the company launched a service for digital collectables to support creators sharing NFT content on Instagram and Facebook, as the speculative crypto asset was popular at the time, even as sales generated by everything from cartoon gorillas to video clips reached billions of dollars at one point.
But as cryptocurrencies began to take a beating, coupled with an avalanche of bitcoin and other tokens in late 2022 after the large exchange FTX suddenly declared bankruptcy. In this scenario, NFT content is no longer favoured by speculators.
NFT, or non-homogenized tokens is a way to crowdfund support for project parties and a unit of data on what is known as a blockchain digital ledger, where each token can represent a unique digital profile that serves as an electronic certification or certificate of ownership of a virtual good. Due to their non-fungible nature, non-homogenized tokens can represent digital assets such as paintings, artwork, sounds, videos, items in games, or other forms of creative work. While the works themselves are infinitely reproducible, these tokens representing them can be fully tracked on their underlying blockchain and therefore provide proof of ownership for buyers. (Cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum and bitcoin have their own token standards to define the use of NFT)
