• Mark Zuckerberg says Instagram will bring Features like Avatar clothing embossing to NFTs
• The social network will support natively minted and imported NFTs

CEO and co-founder of Meta (formerly Facebook) Mark Zuckerberg has confirmed a long-standing rumor that the mammoth technology company wants to explore initiatives around NFTs. Zuckerberg was speaking at the ongoing South by Southwest (SXSW) conference in Austin, Texas, where he confirmed that the digital collectibles would be coming to Instagram.

The Internet entrepreneur has not given a specific date by which he expects the collectibles to be published on the media sharing app. However, he hinted that this should happen in the coming months.

The new feature will likely allow Instagram users to view NFTs they currently own and newer ones.

“We are working on bringing NFTs to Instagram at short notice”, Zuckerberg said. “I’m not ready yet to announce exactly what that will be today. But over the next few months, the opportunity to bring in some of your NFTs will hopefully be able to shape things in that environment over time.“

NFTs will be part of the metaverse

The Meta CEO envisions a future where users could shape the clothes their avatars don in the Metaverse into NFTs. However, there seems to be a lot of work to be done before Meta can actually turn this “dream” into reality.

“I would hope that you know that the clothes that your avatar wears in the metaverse can basically be embossed as NFT, and you can take them with you between your different places. There are a lot of technical things that need to work before this is going to happen really seamlessly”, Zuckerberg noted.

While it won’t be the first time Meta will be looking at products related to blockchain technology, it would be the first concrete march in NFTs.

In the past, there have been only unconfirmed reports, especially with the boom of the NFT space last year. Meta, a technology giant already engaged in the development of its native metaverse, would have ventured into this market at some point anyway.

Zuckerberg’s speech also confirmed a report that the Financial Times it was published in January. Facebook Instagram people familiar with the matter had stated that Meta was planning to set up an NFT marketplace that would allow users on Facebook and Instagram to mint, display, and sell the digital tokens.

Last December sagte Adam Mosseri, CEO of Instagram, that the social media platform NFTs “actively uses“to make them more accessible, and also to help creatives.