Twitter Lets Subscribers Add NFTs For Profile Pics

With nonfungible tokens (NFTs) showing no signs of slowing down, Twitter  (TWTR) – Get Twitter, Inc. Report is letting paying users show off theirs as profile pictures.

The social media platform launched the NFT Profile Pictures on iOS on Thursday.

Available to those who pay $2.99 a month for a Twitter Blue subscription, NFT Profile Pictures will set NFTs apart from regular profile photos through a hexagonal shape.

“Crypto is a key pillar of Twitter’s future,” Esther Crawford, who has been leading this feature launch for Twitter, told the Wall Street Journal. “We want to support this growing interest among creators to use decentralized apps to manage virtual goods and currencies.” 

Still Don’t Know What An NFT Is?

Now commonly associated with photos but also used for music and video, NFTs are a way of asserting ownership over a piece of online content — a limited number of each one maintains exclusivity and make them popular with investors. Certain popular ones like the Bored Ape Yacht Club can sell for millions of dollars.

As Twitter Blue has currently only launched U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand, the NFT feature is also only available in those countries. While Twitter intends to soon bring the feature to Android, it is also only available to Apple  (AAPL) – Get Apple Inc. Report users for the time being. (You will, however, see the swanky profile pictures regardless of subscription status and, or so the company hopes, be motivated to subscribe.)

Why Is Authentication So Important?

While the feature is still very new, crypto fans have already been putting up NFTs on their Twitter accounts. Now, the NFT profile pictures will need to be connected to a cryptocurrency wallet on Argent, Coinbase, Ledger Live, MetaMask, Rainbow or Trust Wallet — by authenticating them, Twitter will prevent the possibility of people posting NFTs they do not own (in the age of screenshots, this can be very easy to do otherwise) or copycats from appearing on the website.

This is a problem that has already started to pop up in the virtual space as NFTs rise in popularity; two separate collections parodying the real Bored Ape Yacht Club have been selling for thousands already. Twitter had first promised to explore ways to authenticate NFTs and launch new ways to use them in September.

“We know that for many people their first experience of NFTs will happen on Twitter with this feature and with the conversations that are taking place on the platform,” Crawford said.