Meta Is Pushing Ahead with NFT Plans, Why the Company Should Maybe Think Twice

Meta is on track to continue expanding the use of digital collectibles like nonfungible tokens on its platforms -- even amid a crash in cryptocurrency prices and drought in NFT sales.

Stephane Kasriel, the new head of fintech at Facebook and Instagram parent Meta (ticker: FB) told the Financial Times in an interview that the social media giant wasn't "in any way" adjusting its plans around NFTs.

NFTs describe data that can be stored and traded on the blockchain, which is the decentralized ledger technology underpinning Bitcoin, Ether, and other cryptocurrencies. Many NFTs are files of digital media such as artwork, and are expected to play a key role in the growth of the metaverse -- a vision of the internet defined by virtual and interactive worlds that Meta is betting big on.

"The opportunity [Meta] sees is for the hundreds of millions or billions of people that are using our apps today to be able to collect digital collectibles, and for the millions of creators out there that could potentially create virtual and digital goods to be able to sell them through our platforms," Kasriel said in the interview.

Interest in NFTs has all but dried up as the digital asset space has been hammered in a selloff this year. Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, is now trading at less than one-third of its record high near $69,000, reached in November 2021. And it just capped its worst quarter since 2011 -- a year in which its price breached $1 for the first time.

Around 850,000 individual NFTs have been sold in the last month, according to data from market tracker NonFungible, which represents a stark fall-off from the nearly 5 million NFTs sold in a monthly window as recently as December 2021.

The value of all NFT sales in the last week, in U.S. dollar terms, has sunk to less than $200 million, according to NonFungible -- the lowest levels since NFTs saw their first major boom in summer 2021.

Meta's fintech chief did acknowledge to the FT that crypto and NFTs are in a slump, saying "there's a lot of things that are not going to survive," but said the sector was following a well-trodden "hype cycle."