Thought real estate in the the real world was expensive? Have a look at price in the Metaverse
Did you know that someone paid nearly half a million bucks to be Snoop Dog's neighbor in the Sandbox? In fact, there are virtual real estate developers as well. Republic Realm, one such firm, bought a land parcel in the Sandbox for US$ 4.3 million.
In February 2021, Axie Infinity (another virtual gaming world) reportedly sold nine of their land parcels for the equivalent of US$1.5 million. Later, one land parcel sold for US$2.3 million in November 2021.
The Metaverse Group, a real estate company focused on the metaverse economy, reportedly bought a piece of land in Decentraland, another virtual platform, for US$2.43 million.
This sounds bizarre and absurd. However, artists such as Justin Bieber and Ariana Grande are performing live in these virtual environments using their very own avatars. Before you jump to any conclusions, there is more. When a real estate developer such as Republic Realm buys land, then they can develop a virtual mall in that place. That is one example. They can even develop a concert hall for artists to perform. Virtual Malls can potentially be developed as an online store - a better immersive version of Amazon that can be used to sell digital and real-world paraphernalia. Virtual Real-Estate does seem to have potential.
As with anything new in this space, growth has been phenomenal, to say the least. Prices of virtual real estate have gone up 4x to 5x in the last half a year.
All of the above sounds crazy as hell to me. I do get some of the investor interest. It is all about investing in two things - 1) a large potential audience and 2) metaverse taking off like crazy. There is definitely a first-mover advantage, not necessarily for games, but definitely virtual worlds. If projects like Decentraland can gather a large enough audience, sustain that growth, and retain users, then such virtual spaces can be used for a number of things. Pinterest/Reddit + AR/VR. There can be plenty of games that can attract a large number of users. Not only Axie and the Sandbox but a number of games in the future can attract an audience and sell a virtual property, which is just another NFT. However, this space is so speculative.
There is no certainty that metaverse will take off. Here are words of a wise man that you may recognize -
I don’t know if I necessarily buy into this Metaverse stuff, although people talk to me a lot about it. You know when I grew up it was like ‘don’t sit too close to the TV it’s gonna ruin your eyesight’ and now TV is like literally right here (puts his hand very close to his face), I’m like umm what? Is that good for you? I don’t see someone strapping a friggin’ screen to their face all day.
Hint: The person above shills Dogecoin on Twitter.
What about you and me? Should we jump on this NFT real estate? I don't think so. I do not have thousands, forget millions, of dollars lying around to speculate on stuff like this. There is no certainty at the moment about which of these projects have a future. There is more real stuff that can go up 4x 5x in months i.e. cryptocurrencies. So this virtual land is definitely a no-go for me. However, it surely is an interesting space to keep watching.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
