You have to hand it to Meta. While the company has talked up the potential of the metaverse, it hasn’t gone overboard with the potential riches of NFTs the way some in the NFT market have. Instead, Meta executives have stuck to talking about the potential of NFTs for small businesses and digital items like concert merchandise. 

On Tuesday, Meta’s VP of Global Gaming Rick Kelley articulated just how much the breathless hype in the NFT space has influenced the company’s careful stance. Speaking with VentureBeat at an event sponsored by Facebook Gaming, Kelley cautioned that the industry needs to “educate the audience” on what to realistically expect from NFTs in gaming and the metaverse. Kelley, correctly, worries that dreams of big paydays spurred by news of multi-million dollar sales steer the conversation away from the more mundane, widespread use Meta seems to be driving toward.