After Twitter and Facebook, YouTube Jumps on the NFT Bandwagon

Non-fungible-tokens (NFTs) have truly swept people off their feet especially media giants like Facebook, Twitter, and now even YouTube. In a recent letter to creators YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki has suggested that the company is considering the possibility of ‘expanding’ YouTube’s offering to include NFTs.

YouTube in the NFT Game

Wojcicki in her annual letter to creators stated that the organization is interested in ‘expanding the YouTube ecosystem’, which may include the platform’s venture into ‘things like NFTs.’

While currently, it remains unclear as to how or in what form YouTube could introduce NFT features the primary focus according to Wojcicki would be to help creators capitalize on emerging technologies as reported in a Bloomberg piece.

The statement further read:

“The past year in the world of crypto, nonfungible tokens (NFTs), and even decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) has highlighted a previously unimaginable opportunity to grow the connection between creators and their fans.”

That said, YouTube creators of viral videos have already made videos into NFTs and sold them individually.

For instance, the ‘Charlie Bit Me’ NFT, depicting a baby biting his brother’s finger, was auctioned off last year, and got sold for $761,000 while ‘David After Dentist,’ a video of a disoriented child post-anesthesia, was sold as an NFT for over $11,000.

Media Giants Embracing NFTs

Last week, as reported in a previous article, Twitter rolled out a new feature of NFT profile photos, where subscribers of ‘Twitter Blue’ can display their NFTs as hex-shaped profile pictures – different from typical profile photos.

Post the announcement, thousands of Twitter users’ profile pictures turned from circular to hexagonal. Meanwhile, Facebook and Instagram also revealed that the platforms are working on a feature that will let users display NFTs as part of their profiles.

Over the last year, Non-fungible tokens have skyrocketed in popularity garnering the attention of people, businesses, and organizations from almost every industry.

That said, the market for NFTs surged to $41 billion in 2021, according to data while in comparison, sales in the conventional art market were about $50 billion in 2020.

Notably, the global crypto market cap at the time of writing stood at $1.68 trillion noting a 5.79% increase over the last day. Bitcoin on the other hand traded at $37,340.35 and was up 5.91% over the last day while Ethereum was up 5.52% as the market seemed to head towards recovery.