In early 2022, Arun Sundararajan wrote a Harvard Business Review case study about how established brands could utilize non-fungible tokens, aka NFTs, right before the crypto market tanked. In the piece, the Harold Price Professor of Entrepreneurship at New York University’s Stern School of Business tried to make sense of the then-crypto craze, mentioning that tech firms like Twitter and Facebook (now X and Meta, respectively) were allowing more user customization through NFT avatars.
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“Designed right, NFTs could build on the expansion of conspicuous consumption seeded by social media, allowing us to showcase our non-digital lives in our digital spaces more expansively and more authentically,” Sundararajan wrote, arguing that NFTs were “going mainstream in 2022.”
Little did Sundararajan know that in just a few short weeks, the bottom would fall out under the entire crypto market, and NFTs would plummet. Meta would soon discontinue NFT functionality on its Instagram and Facebook apps, to refocus on “areas where we can make impact at scale” during its “year of efficiency,” after the company’s pivot towards the metaverse hit a wall.
This was not the first time Facebook’s crypto plans were foiled. In fact, there could be a whole HBR edition about the pitfalls of established corporations experimenting with crypto based on Facebook’s failed blockchain efforts. Its Libra stablecoin plan, hatched in 2019, envisioned a radical alternative global currency before it was ravished by regulators. Then the company pulled the plug on Diem, a significantly scaled-down stablecoin effort, after putting a significant amount of resources into developing a new blockchain, wallet and programming language.
If there is any company likely to remain arms length from blockchain, even as the market appears to rebound, it’s probably Meta. This isn’t to say Meta, which is as opportunistic as any corporation, will always steer clear. But it’s hard to imagine it advancing crypto adoption much these days. Especially considering Mark Zuckerberg recently announced he’s directing the largest social media’s vast resources towards…
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