Meta "Short-Sightedly" Pulls NFTs From Instagram in Crypto U-Turn
Meta is ending support for NFTs on its platforms less than a year after its roll-out.
On Monday, Meta's fintech head Stephane Kasriel announced the firm is "winding down digital collectibles (NFTs) for now to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses."
Read more: BlackRock's New Metaverse ETF is Meta-Heavy Despite Weak Outlook
"We'll continue investing in fintech tools that people and businesses will need for the future. We're streamlining payments w/ Meta Pay, making checkout and payouts easier, and investing in messaging payments across Meta," Kasriel said.
Some product news: across the company, we're looking closely at what we prioritize to increase our focus. We’re winding down digital collectibles (NFTs) for now to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses. 🧵[1/5]
— Stephane Kasriel (@skasriel) March 13, 2023
The news comes as Meta revealed it is planning multiple rounds of additional layoffs, amounting to the same 13% cut from last year.
Meta's announcement was not well received by the crypto community. NFT artist Dave Krugman described Meta's move as "wild" and “a short-sighted”, criticising the firm for “quitting before it even started.”
Such a short sighted move. Inclusion of digital collectibles has so much potential to help creators engage their communities and counterbalance the pitfalls of attention based advertising economies. You guys quit before you even started. A real shame and undoing a lot of really… https://t.co/eC9hl9cWsw
— Dave💧💧💧 (@dave_krugman) March 13, 2023
Podcaster Marc Colcer also described Meta's U-turn as “short-sighted for a company that’s supposed to be thinking long term.”
Some product news: across the company, we're looking closely at what we prioritize to increase our focus. We’re winding down digital collectibles (NFTs) for now to focus on other ways to support creators, people, and businesses. 🧵[1/5]
— Stephane Kasriel (@skasriel) March 13, 2023
In August 2022, Instagram rolled out NFT features to over 100 countries across Africa, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and the Americas.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the move with photos of a Little League baseball card he made himself as a youngster.
Meta's muddy metaverse
In its most recent quarter, Meta's revenue beat was quickly soured by when its metaverse arm, Reality Labs, reported a whopping loss of US$13.7 billion in 2022, compared to a loss of US$10.2 billion in 2021.
In Q4 alone, the segment's loss was over US$4.3 billion, marking its worst quarter since Q4 2020.
Read more: Meta's Metaverse Arm Reality Labs Revenue Win Overshadowed By Growing Losses
Meta CFO Susan Li said Reality Labs expects losses to deepen throughout the year. “On Reality Labs, we still expect our full year Reality Labs losses to increase in 2023, and we are going to continue to invest meaningfully in this area given the significant long-term opportunities that we see,” Li said on the earnings call.
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