The Metaverse is currently the talk of Silicon Valley and Wall Street. The Metaverse, a network of 3D virtual worlds, is preparing for a virtual real estate boom with investors paying millions for a slice of what digital currency investor Greyscale predicts will evolve into a global market for goods and services worth $1 trillion annually. The Metaverse Group has assembled a portfolio of investment properties in the Metaverse with names like Decentraland, Somnium Space, Sandbox, and Upland. Another digital land pioneer, SuperWorld, has mapped the entire globe and now offers 64.8 billion plots of virtual land as non-fungible tokens or NFTs.
Michael Gord, co-founder of the Metaverse Group, claims that “It’s inevitable that the Metaverse will be the No. 1 social network in the world.” And last week Matt Ball, Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF founder, told CNBC that in his view, the move to the Metaverse will be a “multi trillion dollar multi-decade transition.”
Gord and Ball are hardly alone. In October, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg rebranded his company as Meta. And over the past several months, companies have been shelling out large sums for a piece of the action.
Companies such as Tokens.com and Boson Protocol are working on monetizing the Metaverse. In October of last year, Tokens.com purchased a 50 percent stake in the Metaverse Group for about $1.7 million. The following month they paid roughly $2.4 million in cryptocurrency (each Metaverse accepts its own form of crypto, in this case, the deal was completed in ‘MANA’) for virtual real estate in the Fashion Street district of Decentraland. Subsequently, Tokens.com has “broken ground” on what is to become a virtual equivalent of L.A.’s Rodeo Drive or Chicago’s Magnificent Mile. Real world luxury retailers such as Louis Vitton and Burberry have entered the Metaverse, looking to capitalize on the Metaverse gold rush by selling NFTs of their products as well as leasing ad space in the virtual world.
