Reddit’s users creating millions of crypto wallets to buy NFTs was one of the most commented news over the last 2 weeks in the NFT universe. Why is this a big deal? What does this mean for the future of NFT adoption? Let’s take a look!
During a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt, Reddit’s Chief Product Officer Pali Bhat revealed that over 3 million Redditors have used Reddit’s Vault blockchain wallet to create over 3 million crypto wallets. Most of those — 2.5 million — were created to purchase NFT avatars that can be used as profile pics on the platform.
3 million crypto wallets, “Vaults” as they preferred to call them, were created, and 2.5M were used to buy NFTs Avatars that, later, can be resold as profile pictures. Do you remember how tricky it was the first time you set up a wallet? Here we have millions of people having their first crypto experience, and they don’t even realize that they are using blockchain technology behind it.
Let's take a look at some numbers
In total, 40,000 avatar NFTs, created by 30 different artists, were sold between $9.99 and $99.99.
Once the secondary market trading activity started, top avatars were selling for 6.9 ETH (the highest was 175) with a market cap of around $100M, and 24 hrs volume of $235K. Do you want to dig even deeper into the collection’s numbers? Following this link, you’ll find everything you need.
One important point is that when Reddit announced they were doing this, they never used the word NFT. They preferred using “digital collectibles,” and they used credit cards as the payment method. They conveniently hide all the unnecessary details from users to make onboarding as easy as possible.
Also, no one is talking about this on Crypto Twitter. This means that their user base is primarily new market entrants (the Reddit community has been well-known as NFT haters in the past).
What can we expect in the future?
Reddit started its NFT adventure in July 2022 (partnering with Polygon). Given the market conditions at the time, many people believed this was doomed to fail. Starting in August, Reddit airdropped free NFTs to the most active users. These users started using avatars as PFPs, and the popularity among regular users surged. Fast-forward a couple of months, and the paid collection sold out.
Some lessons here could be:
- Stop using the word NFT.
- Start allowing people to use more traditional payment methods, such as credit cards.
To put some of these numbers in perspective, OpenSea, the most popular NFT marketplace, has approximately 1M active wallets, and Metamask has created almost 30 Million Wallets (we could assume that most users have more than just 1 wallet). Whereas Reddit managed to onboard 2.5 Million people to buy NFTs in a couple of weeks. Whether you like it or not, this is how fast Web2 social media platforms can help scale crypto, at least at this point.
Reddit is a huge platform, with almost 500M active users, and after the success of this campaign, a lot of them are willing to take a leap of faith into the web train.
Where do the other major social media platforms stand regarding NFTs and Web3?
- Meta released NFT sharing on Facebook and Instagram, as you can read in one of our previous articles.
- Twitter allows Twitter Blue subscribers on iOS to set NFTs as Profile Pictures and is now testing a new NFT integration feature that will make buying and selling easier
- Telegram launches marketplace to auction rare username handles. Will start with auctions of four and five-letter handles.
Another critical real-use case for NFT technology that could bring a new wave of thousands or millions of users is ticketing. A couple of weeks ago, we had one of our “Empowering Spaces” with Facundo Diaz, Co-Founder of TravelX, a company that provides NFT tickets for the airplane industry.
What will be the most significant catalyst for bringing the masses into NFTs?.
Nacho is a writer for The Pulse. He is mostly involved in NFTs, Bitcoin and Ethereum ecosystem. Freedom advocate.
ModSquad for the Impact Theory Discord and admin for The Pulse
Building The Pulse.
