Deutsche Bank, a former cryptocurrency critic, believes Meta’s decision to integrate NFTs into one of its companies – Instagram – will legitimize those assets.
Instagram Will Legitimize NFTs
According to a report note released by Deutsche Bank on Sunday, cited by Coindesk, the deployment of NFT technology on Instagram has the potential to energize the entire market and make it mainstream.
Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and Founder of Meta, confirmed that the company will bring NFTs into Instagram in the next several months to let users mint such assets directly on the platform.
The note indicated that Meta-owned Instagram will simplify the process of buying and selling NFTs, further reducing the barriers to accessing this form of digital assets. With its notable brand effect, the note said, Instagram can legitimize NFTs, facilitating a greater level of public adoption.
The German bank also predicted that Instagram building an NFT Marketplace can bring roughly eight billion net transactions per year. Besides Instagram, major internet companies like Twitter and Snap will, to some degree, bring NFTs into their platforms.
Earlier this year, Twitter began allowing its users who have subscribed to Twitter Blue, a paid premium service including features unavailable to regular users, to showcase the NFTs they own as verified profile pictures. This feature draws immense attention along with the rising popularity of NFT projects like Bored Apes Yacht Club.
Reddit, another social media giant, is seeking managers and engineers to “build(ing) the largest creator economy on the internet, powered by independent creators, digital goods, and NFTs.” This is also a sign that the company is potentially trying to develop its own NFT marketplace and a vibrant community based on NFT collections.
Hyper Growth Ahead for the NFT Market
The note describes the current NFT market as in a stage of “hyper-growth,” adding that the total addressable industry is estimated to exceed $1 trillion.
According to the report, the transaction volume of NFTs reached around $25 billion last year, 250 times more than the volume of approximately $95 million as recorded for 2020.