Mark Zuckerberg plans NFT paradise, China wants to ban it

Announced at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas Meta-CEO Mark Zuckerberg, at an NFT function for Instagram to work. After the integration of non-fungible tokens on Twitter and Reddit Zuckerberg now also dares to venture into the realm of the much-hyped NFTs with his company.

While Twitter is all about NFT profile pictures, there is speculation that Reddit wants to build its own marketplace for the digital collectibles, for example OpenSea to compete. Zuckerberg, however, is not showing his cards yet.

After the conference, tech journalist Casey Newton reported via Twitter that the meta boss also planned to mint NFTs on Instagram. When asked what exactly the feature will entail, a spokeswoman for Meta told BTC-ECHO: “We’ve said before that we’re exploring NFTs and we don’t have any further information beyond what Mark has on the SXSW said”.

So it remains to be seen what exactly the new feature means for the platform. the Deutsche Bank already predicts that an NFT integration on Instagram could push the sector strongly towards mass adoption, like CoinDesk reported.

NFT sector in China’s shortage

While US social media platforms are outdoing each other with news about new NFT features, China is backtracking.

According to crypto journalist Colin Wu reporting on the spot, the popular news service suspended WeChat Accounts related to NFTs. The reason: spread of speculation. On Twitter, Wu said:

WeChat, which has 1.2 billion users, said it has banned NFT accounts en masse, requires them to have a Chinese government-provided blockchain business login, and bans secondary transactions.

Colin Wu, crypto journalist in China on Twitter

After the Middle Kingdom put a stop to the crypto mining sector, the general ban on crypto transactions soon followed. There are also strict rules for the NFT sector.

Only recently founded the company behind WeChat, Tencent with the wholesaler Alibaba its own NFT marketplace. However, due to new guidelines in China, the trading venue underwent a rebranding that renamed the term “NFT” to “Digital Collectible”.

China continues to pursue its surveillance strategy. While the government is generally putting a stop to cryptocurrencies, the Chinese central bank digital currency (CBDC) is becoming more and more integrated into everyday life. This narrative is slowly being observed in the NFT sector as well: preferably only state-owned projects.