It looks Reddit is the next social-media beast making a move into the non-fungible token space, revealing it has plans to hire staff to help build an NFT marketplace.

According to a new job posting on recruitment platform Greenhouse, Reddit, one of the world’s biggest social-media services, is seeking a senior backend engineer to help develop a trading platform for “millions of users to create, buy, sell and use NFT-backed digital goods.”

Describing itself as “the front page of the internet”, Reddit’s social discussion and news aggregation service is already a hotbed for the crypto world and attracts more than 430 million users per month.

“If there is one thing we’ve noticed with NFTs, they too have an incredible power to create a sense of participation and belonging,” reads Reddit’s job post. “With every new NFT project, a vibrant community of owners pops up with it. Fans of today’s biggest creators and brands are now flocking to buy digital goods directly from them — to support them, to gain exclusive access, and to feel a greater sense of connection with them.”

The news has the cryptoverse pretty interested, including one of the founders of prominent Indian crypto exchange WazirX…

“Over time, we believe this will only grow, and NFTs will play a central role in how fans support their favourite creators and communities,” the listing continued.

 

Social media NFT and crypto moves

Other social-media giants dipping toes into the NFT space, if not yet with full-on marketplaces to rival OpenSea, include TikTok with a recent celebrity NFT collection, and Twitter. Jack Dorsey’s company recently revealed it’s working towards enabling users to display fully verified, badge-ticked NFTs as their profile pics.

And we suppose we’d best not forget Facebook in the conversation, which has big blockchain-based metaverse plans and has also hinted that its Novi crypto wallet, currently in development, will be supporting NFTs.

What’s more, global crypto exchange Coinbase (also building its own NFT marketplace) recently announced it’s partnering with Facebook to store cryptos that the social-media behemoth plans to offer users who sign up for the early test version of the Novi wallet.

Not everyone is thrilled about the Facebook/Coinbase collab, though, including ardent supporters of true decentralisation within the crypto industry, as well as a group of American politicians.

Five Democratic senators, led by perma-crypto sceptic Elizabeth Warren, sent a stern letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg a day after the Novi pilot project with Coinbase was announced.

“Time and again, Facebook has made conscious business decisions to continue with actions that have harmed its users and the broader society,” reads the letter. “Facebook cannot be trusted to manage a payment system or digital currency when its existing ability to manage risks and keep consumers safe has proven wholly insufficient.”

 

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