This morning it was announced that Instagram will support digital art in the form of NFTs. One of the most important partners for this is blockchain platform Polygon. The associated crypto is called Matic and it has risen by 200% in recent months.
Increase of 200%
Polygon’s list of high-profile partners is getting longer, with Disney, Starbucks and Robinhood already on board and BLOX offering the crypto Matic.
Since the announcement of Instagram this morning, the price of Polygon (Matic) is up 11%. The value is now 0.98 euros. That is remarkable to say the least, because on June 19 the exchange rate was still 0.33 euros. So Polygon is up about 200%.
Second layer of Ethereum
Meta, the parent company of Instagram, mentioned Polygon by name. That is quite a lot for a blockchain project that is actually ‘just’ a second layer on Ethereum. A few years ago it was very busy on Ethereum, which caused transaction costs to rise and the waiting time to increase.
One of the solutions was to build a second layer over the Ethereum blockchain. It makes a difference that Polygon has handled this well, and not only makes transactions possible, but also smart contracts and NFTs.
Polygon makes it possible for Instagram users to create, present and trade NFTs on and off Instagram.
Good third quarter Polygon
Additionally, Polygon had a strong third quarter, with active wallets hitting an all-time high of 6 million, primarily driven by the launch of Reddit’s NFT marketplace on… you guessed it: Polygon.
Polygon and Reddit
Reddit users can purchase avatars and store them in the platform’s wallet. These can then be set as profile picture.
Because the NFTs live on Polygon’s blockchian, they can also be sent to your own wallet, or to OpenSea, for example. OpenSea is the largest marketplace for NFTs today. There is a good chance that these NFTs can now also be used on Instagram.
Although some collections are worth little to nothing, Reddit already has a number of collections where the bottom price is 2,000 euros.
Starbucks and Polygon
Starbucks is also taking off with Polygon. Starbucks Odyssey will allow customers to purchase and earn digital collectible stamps. Except you don’t have to use spit for these stamps, unless you like a wet screen.
The stamps have various benefits for customers, but what these are is not yet known. It would be part of a “new digital community”, according to Starbucks.
JP Morgan and Singapore use Polygon
US major bank JP Morgan has successfully executed its first-ever cross-border transaction using crypto and DeFi on a public blockchain. This transaction was executed yesterday by the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s (MAS) Project Guardian, among others.
Project Guardian is part of a pilot program to “explore potential decentralized finance (DeFi) applications in wholesale finance markets.”
In other words, the pilot was intended to see what crypto could mean for transactions in a traditional financial system.
The transaction was executed on Polygon using Aave.
