Redditors Have Created Millions of Crypto Wallets To Buy NFT Avatars

An anonymous reader shares a report: In July, Reddit jumped on the NFT train, launching an NFT-based marketplace that allows users to purchase blockchain-based profile pictures for a fixed rate. Given the general sentiment around NFTs today, you might assume -- like me -- that the experiment ended poorly. But the opposite's the case apparently .

Today during a panel at TechCrunch Disrupt, Reddit chief product officer Pali Bhat revealed that over three million Redditors have used Reddit's Vault blockchain wallet to create over three million crypto wallets to date. Most of those -- 2.5 million -- were created to purchase NFT avatars that can be used as profile pics on the platform, he said.

Free avatars?

[Ogive17]

I don't use reddit. Can a user normally have an avatar or only those who purchased the nft are able to use one?

If the latter, I guess I can see some value as it would be a distinguishing item on the site.

Re:Free avatars?

[Gilgaron]

Its used much like Slashdot mixed with a bit of Facebook Groups since their are subforums. There are free avatars, and the avatars are a small icon next to your user name. So it is in on the same tier as buying hats in Team Fortress, except even less noticeable. I doubt anyone is dropping nontrivial amounts of money into it, but there's a sucker born every minute. Offhand, of posts I see in Reddit half haven't even used the free customization for the avatar and have a default placeholder one, and I wouldn't know how to tell what other items are free or not.

Re:

[nullforce]

Reddit allows you to upload an image to use as your avatar/profile pic (jpg or png).

Re:

[shadowrat]

I created a wallet to hold my avatar. I never bought anything though. reddit one day just asked me if i wanted this free avatar. I accepted. I guess that counts as a huge success for reddit??

Re:

[jvkjvk]

You can create your own semi-custom avatar from their stock bits - hands, feet, chest, eyes, accouterments, etc.

So, everyone can have *an* avatar. But these are super plus double good avatars, you see! Of course you want to fork your hard earned money over so other people can see some other colors and shapes on Reddit than the previous colors and shapes.

Re:

[pete6677]

I see no reason at all to mix Reddit with NFT wallets.

Millions created, probably very few sold

[SoCalChris]

Millions have created them because they gave you a free avatar and you needed to create the wallet to receive the avatar. They didn't tell you what exactly you were doing, they just pushed it out as a free new avatar for using on the site.

I seriously doubt that they've sold a fraction of that.

Re:Millions created, probably very few sold

[Scoth]

This is how I ended up with one. I don't give a shit about NFTs or whatever, only barely had an avatar, but they threw a free one at me so I figured what's the harm. Haven't spent a cent on anything avatar-related at this point.

Re:

[Syberz]

The article says that 2.5million of the 3 million accounts created were used to purchase avatars and these avatars are now sold out.

I'd be willing to bet that most of those purchases were done by people who have no idea what an NFT is or that it can (technically) be resold to someone else; these were bought by people who wanted to buy a "cool avatar" to be different. Until folks start successfully selling these things again to others, it's not a win for the NFT pushers.

Re:

[splutty]

So it's 2.5 million wallets they gave away for free to people who don't do anything with them at all.

That's one way of cooking your numbers.

Re:

[nash]

Yeah, I have one these.

It was like 2 clicks to get one in the popup. I literally forgot about it until now. If someone wants to buy it, great, I accept venmo.

My interest in buying any others is exactly zero.

Re:

[Junta]

I created one, mainly to make it stop nagging me to create one.

I further clicked on the avatar thing so it probably counts me as 'sold' despite never giving real or pretend money to reddit.

Reddit... NFTs...

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

A match made in heaven - a sort of agglutination of the mediocre...

Redditors are gullible.

[poptopdrop]

Film at 11.

The only good use of NFTs

[ThoolooExpress]

Cheap, fun, and purley cosmetic, the way NFTs should be. Most of the hate for NFTs comes from people trying to make them into some kind of investment and shoehorn them into places they don't belong.

Re:

[muh_freeze_peach]

when is the fun part?

I only use old reddit

[self-inflicted]

I don't see this type of shit, or almost any of their other fancy visual whirlygigs. Just replace "www" with "old" in the URL. If they ever remove the old interface I will be going there a lot less-- the new design is way less information dense, slower and way more annoying/distracting.

--
We will soon have the option to harvest our farts, so we can post & comment on stats about them.

Re:

[muh_freeze_peach]

A reddit hipster. It has come to this.

Only because they offered me a free avatar

[NerdENerd]

I didn't create a vault wallet to purchase an avatar, I created one because Reddit gave am one for free. Pretty sure this would be the majority of those wallets created.

the meat is in the details I say

[Walt Dismal]

Three million real Redditors or three million users of questionable origin and purpose?

2.5 million out of 52 million users...

[mlawrence]

Less than 5% of users purchased a unique avatar, and most of them will never bother with crypto again. Big deal.