How to make your Twitter profile picture an NFT

Conspicuous consumption is now officially integrated into the Twitter app.

The social media giant announced Thursday a new feature which lets paying Twitter Blue subscribers on iOS officially link non-fungible tokens to their profile pictures. Once done, the Twitter profile pic in question will display with a hexagonal border instead of a circle, and users will be able to click the picture for information about the associated NFT.

“This new feature provides a seamless, user-friendly way for people on Twitter to verify their NFT ownership by allowing them to directly connect their crypto wallets to Twitter and select an NFT from their collection as their new profile picture,” explains a Twitter press release.

The release also notes plans to bring the feature to Android and the web, but does not mention a specific timeline for doing so. A Twitter Blue subscription currently costs $2.99 per month.

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Twitter’s move follows on the growing trend of people using images linked to NFTs, such as the cartoon apes of the Bored Ape Yacht Club, as profiles pictures on social media. By allowing users to officially designate their profile picture as tied to an NFT, it can perhaps be read as an effort to combat another online trend: people right-click saving the JPEGs associated with NFTs and using those images as profile pictures, too.

See the hexagonal profile picture?
Credit: Screenshot: Twitter

Notably, Twitter has placed some limitation on which NFTs can be linked to profile pictures. A Twitter spokesperson confirmed that, at least for now, this only works with NFTs minted on the Ethereum blockchain.

“We’re currently focusing on Ethereum for our first iteration to get it right before moving onto other chains,” explained the spokesperson over email.

What’s more, for this to work, “for now” users must use one of six cryptocurrency wallets to store their NFTs: Coinbase Wallet, Rainbow, MetaMask, Trust, Argent, or Ledger Live.

The permissionless future sure is bright.