Meta has been working since the beginning of the year to immerse itself in NFTs, the beta testing began in the United States with a group of content creators last May, and then opened to the public in some countries in June.

Since opening, Brazil leads the list of countries with the largest number of users with NFTs, followed by Mexico, and Argentina in third place, according to Statista.

With this new step, a total of 100 countries now have access to the NFT features...

The plan will eventually end with all 251 million users able to participate.

As part of the launch, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared an NFT version of this childhood photo on Instagram..

"In honor of expanding digital collectible NFTs to 100 more countries on Instagram, I'm sharing my old and soon to be NFT Little League baseball card."

The next step is to make the platform fully compatible with the rest of the crypto/nft world...

This means supporting popular wallets people are already using - MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Coinbase Wallet, and Dapper Wallet support is coming soon. Meta has stated that there are no fees associated with posting or sharing a digital collectible on Instagram.

All NFT's minted on the platform will end up on the Ethereum or Polygon blockchain, and they will be adding Flow and Solana soon.

Did We Underestimate Mark Zuckerberg?

To be fair, the crypto world has valid reasons to be skeptical anytime Facebook starts hyping up their plans for the future.

"Disaster" sums up Facebook's first venture into crypto with a coin called 'Libra'. Behind that coin was an aggressive plan that would bring together powerful organizations and companies from around the world of traditional and corporate finance, with the goal of basically taking over the crypto world in one giant leap.

This alliance of companies and organizations that would govern the coin was called the Libra Association, but their plans were so aggressive that governments began fearing that their influence could end up going beyond crypto, reaching their currencies too.

At the time, Governments Around the World Were Focusing on Facebook...

It wasn't long until politicians in virtually every country where people used Facebook were sharing concern, or complete disapproval.

The most common argument Facebook owning a popular online marketplace, holding the power to choose who can buy or sell there, and issuing their own money would give Facebook more power than any private company should have - governments don't like it when people try to do THEIR job.

US Senators summoned Facebook executives to Washington, DC where they questioned their intent and long term goals with Libra Coin - it ended with politicians from both major parties swearing they'd never allow Facebook's vision to become reality.

The Trump administration said they were "uncomfortable" with the whole thing, and in a rare moment, Democrats agreed, with one Democratic senator labeling Facebook "delusional" for ever thinking it could happen.

But Does Zuckerberg take 'no' for an answer? No.

Of course, Zuckerberg couldn't help but to take one last shot at making it happen.  This time they would avoid making headlines, hoping to quietly glide through required regulatory processes in the countries they wanted to operate in.

So first, they changed the project's name to 'Diem Coin', which would be managed by the 'Diem Foundation'.  But instead of the fresh start they hoped this would bring them, they quickly learned that the name change didn't fool anyone, people were actually paying attention, and politicians were still telling them "no."

While they never got to use it, they did create a blockchain protocol of their own, a custom wallet and various other tools and assets, they were ready to go big - in the end, they managed to sell everything they built to a company called Silverware for $200 million according to the Wall Street Journal.

The news about the sell, from 8 months ago, is still the most recent update on the website for Diem Coin. 

Fast Forward To Today - Facebook Hasn't Made the Same Mistakes Twice...

None of the chaos we saw with Libra/Diem has been present in Facebook's expansion into NFTs. From their first announcement to recent launch it remained generally free of controversy. 

Now it's starting to look like Zuckerberg may have built a legitimate platform, focusing on becoming part of the NFT world, not plotting to overtake it.

There's potential for Facebook to become a major player in the NFT market - do you agree? Tweet us your thoughts @TheCryptoPress and we may add them to this article!

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Author: Ross Davis
Silicon Valley Newsroom
GCP | Breaking Crypto News