Facebook Financial head David Marcus says the social media giant sees room to incorporate non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in conjunction with the upcoming launch of its cryptocurrency wallet Novi.
In a new interview with Bloomberg, Marcus explains the company’s broad and forward-thinking approach, and how it relates to the metaverse, the online universe of interconnected virtual worlds.
“Thinking about the metaverse as a fully digital environment is actually super helpful when you design products that need to be future-proof. When I look at what’s going to be needed in the metaverse, it’s really seamless movement of value, and for that, we need a new infrastructure, interoperability, because you’ll want to have multiple wallets able to participate in a metaverse.
And I think having programmable money and having smart contracts on top of a purposefully built blockchain is going to be transformational for the metaverse. Because if you’re a creator, if you’re creating an NFT, you may want to rent your NFT or sell your NFT, you’ll have to store your NFT. And you can think of all kinds of new business models around this that are not possible with the current payments infrastructure and without smart contracts.
I think it’s super interesting to start thinking about these things now so we can build the right infrastructure and think about how to design these products the right way so that they’re future-proof.”
When pressed about Facebook’s immediate plans regarding NFTs, Marcus says,
“It’s too early to talk about our plans, but we’re definitely looking at a number of ways to get involved in the space, because we think we’re in a really good position to do so. And when you have a good crypto wallet like Novi will be, you also have to think about how to help consumers support NFTs. And so while there’s no immediate plans I can talk about, we’re definitely thinking about this. It’s really an area worth exploring and one where we can have a positive impact for both creators and consumers on the other side.”
The Novi wallet, formerly known as Diem, is “a new global payment system” currently under development by Facebook. No formal launch date has been set.
Don't Miss a Beat – Subscribe to get email alerts delivered directly to your inbox
Check Price Action
Follow us on X, Facebook and Telegram
Surf The Daily Hodl Mix
Featured Image: Shutterstock/Ievgenii Meyer/archy13/stockphoto-graf