Crypto fans have lost some free advertising.
Elon Musk’s X on Tuesday announced its 2024 goals, including adding peer-to-peer payments and transitioning into a video-first model. Absent in the announcement was the removal of NFT — nonfungible token — profile pictures.
X scrubbed the site of any mention of the feature, which let users who had minted NFT tokens on Ethereum use such tokens as profile pictures. The pictures would be shaped like hexagons, and if users clicked on them, they would provide more detailed information about the NFT.
The feature was one of the best forms of free advertising for the crypto and NFT market. Originally added by the previous Twitter regime in January 2022, the feature was moved to premium once Mr. Musk took the reins in October of that year, meaning users had to pay to use it.
Users who still feature their NFTs on their profile will keep their hexagon shape, but it remains unclear if that will disappear as well.
The removal of the feature comes as the crypto and NTF communities hold less sway in tech spaces than they did two years ago. While Mr. Musk remains sympathetic to the crypto crowd, daily discussion on X has moved far away from NFT culture.
X is also not the first platform to remove some of its crypto-centric features. Meta discontinued its support for NFTs on Facebook and Instagram last March 2023.
The steady departure from NFTs comes after a scathing report from last year that found most NFTs valueless. In November, researchers from dappGambl found that 95% of the 74,000 NTFs surveyed were worth nothing.
• Vaughn Cockayne can be reached at vcockayne@washingtontimes.com.
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