For many doomsayers, this is their “I told you so” moment.
After months of seemingly impossible gains, the markets are finally adjusting to reality.
As financial markets generally have gotten whacked in the new year, crypto has had an especially rough time.
Since the start of the year, both Bitcoin and Ethereum are down. These losses are likely just the start of a long and drawn-out bear market for crypto.
With this price correction, Crypto-skeptics are finally getting their long awaited (and overdue) vindication.
And while it is perfectly justifiable to write off crypto at this moment when the market seems to be collapsing, it is also important to recognize that this too might be an overstatement.
Just recently, Meta Platforms—the parent company of Facebook—announced that they are exploring plans to allow users to mint, showcase, and trade NFTs.
Although details are scant at the moment, it could represent the transition of NFTs from early adopters to the mainstream ... if Facebook follows through with its NFT plans.
This is a big “if.” Facebook has a spotty track record for announcing interest in new markets only to later backtrack or deliver half-baked products. Analysts will remind the public of the company’s underwhelming attempts to build products in the online dating or ecommerce marketplaces.
A well-designed and executed entrance into the world of NFTs, could, on the other hand, set the market absolutely skyrocketing.
As the world’s largest social network and a top online communications platform, Facebook is—for many people—the center of their digital lives.
NFTs allow people to express themselves and their interests or affiliations in ways that go beyond what can be conveyed by posts or photos.
Although NFTs are currently the territory of the technically savvy or trendy streetwear types, an easy-to-use and thoughtfully designed product from Facebook could open the market to a much larger audience of middle-aged moms and geriatric retirees.
Whether this will have an impact on the existing NFT market remains to be seen.
Facebook could very well introduce an NFT platform that can only be used within the confines of Facebook’s ecosystem.
This could, in time, potentially eclipse the size of the existing NFT ecosystem on platforms like Ethereum.
However, even the introduction and widespread usage of NFTs on a closed ecosystem like Facebook’s could have a positive impact for “legacy” decentralized NFT ecosystems.
An increased awareness, understanding, respect, and appreciation of the value of NFTs that comes from a successful launch of a Facebook NFT marketplace could have a halo effect that spills over into other NFT ecosystems.
Although the doom-and-gloomers will have you believe that this year’s crypto market correction reflects a deflating fad, astute investors know that this might just be the start for a very large market in the making.
