Elon Musk lashes out at Twitter over NFT profile pictures
Elon Musk has criticised a new Twitter feature which allows users to showcase hexagon-shaped NFTs on their profiles.
The world’s richest man has lashed out at Twitter’s decision to expend resources on a new NFT feature, labelling it “annoying”. The social media giant yesterday released a trailer teasing the new feature, available on iOS, which connects Twitter accounts to crypto wallets where the users store NFT holdings.
“This is annoying,” wrote Musk. “Twitter is spending engineering resources on this bs while crypto scammers are throwing a spambot block party in every thread!?”
The reaction to Musk’s comments were mixed. While some users reiterated the call for Twitter to remove accounts promoting crypto scams others pointed out that Musk had himself directed Tesla engineers to spend time adding a Dogecoin payment feature to its online store.
In a tweet yesterday, Twitter Blue said it was responding to user demand by rolling out the feature to its subscription users amid an explosion of interest in the digital collectibles market.
The NFTs will be displayed as hexagons in order to differentiate them from the standard circles available to other Twitter users. Tapping on the NFT profile pictures will reveal details about the art and its ownership.
Twitter has a longstanding interest in crypto assets and NFTs recently introducing a bitcoin tipping function to the platform.
Social media platform Reddit also jumped on the NFT craze last year issuing a line of collectible avatars known as ‘crypto snoos’. Meta is also reportedly developing features to display NFTs on Instagram and Facebook.
It comes amid an explosion in the NFT market, with investors pouring $40bn into digital collectibles last year. Amid the hype celebrities including Eminem, DJ Khaled and Jimmy Fallon have snapped up collectible images of garish, cartoon Apes from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, taking to social media to share the news.