Published , by TJ Denzer
Published , by TJ Denzer
It would appear that Twitter (now known as X) is shutting down its support of NFT profile pictures on its social media platform. While Elon Musk originally took Twitter in a direction that supports cryptocurrency and NFTs, the hype on non-fungible tokens in general has died down quite a bit since. The removal of NFT support from the Twitter Premium pages marks another group withdrawing from the once popular commodity.
Twitter’s removal of NFTs from its Premium subscriber information page was spotted via TechCrunch. Originally, under the header labeled “Features available to every Premium tier,” there was a “Create a Community” section that explained how you could set an NFT as a profile pic after linking Twitter to a crypto wallet. The user’s profile pic would then have a special hexagonal border to signify it was a confirmed NFT. There were further mentions of NFTs, exactly how to set them as profile pics, and other details about their usage on Twitter, as preserved in a previous version of the page in the Internet Archive.
All mention of NFTs have now been scrubbed from the live page on Twitter’s support website. Some users may still have hexagonal bordered profile pictures, but it remains to be seen if that will last much longer.
Twitter adopted NFT support at the start of January 2022 as a feature of its subscription service, then known as Twitter Blue. Elon Musk has signaled intent several times that he would like Twitter to become a financial institution as well as a social media platform, where people might bank and invest their money rather than traditional banks. NFTs and the option to link a crypto wallet could be seen as part of that initiative. However, NFTs hardly have the heft they had in 2022. The market is not dead, but its values have plummeted from their highs, due in part to legal matters such as the IRS wanting to tax them as collectibles.
Twitter hasn’t formally announced it is quitting support of NFTs, but the implications of their removal from information pages arguably speak volumes. Stay tuned as we follow this story for further updates.