Mo’ Meta
What do these names have in common? Decentraland (pvt), The Sandbox (pvt), Upland (pvt) and Somnium (pvt). They all sell real estate but do not compete against Coldwell Banker (RLGY) or ReMax (RMAX) as the land they sell does not actually exists, or at least not in the physical world and companies like this are making money. And generating considerable interest among ‘investors’ that range from individuals to real estate ‘virtual’ trusts. While virtual real estate might seem like the ultimate speculative bubble, especially given China’s recent abhorrence for anything bitcoiny, but that doesn’t seem to be stopping some from providing services necessary to develop such virtual worlds.
Alibaba (BABA) has just set up a subsidiary that is offering ‘platform-as-a-service’ to those seeking to develop their ‘parcels’ or build Metaverse sites and Alibaba’s gaming division launched its own brand in September, offering cloud-based games, and a developer platform within the PAAS framework. This comes despite the government’s stringent new policies about speculation surrounding the Metaverse, which cites virtual real estate as an example of the type of speculation that could lead to significant losses, fraud, illegal fundraising, and money laundering. The policies however are not quite specific enough whe it comes to NFTs (Non-fungible Tokens) or similar virtual currencies, which has left the door open, at least a little bit, for some forms of virtual speculation, and an even wider door for those companies that will provide the tools for building virtual platforms.
The Meta-verse is so new that companies are popping up like mushrooms, ready to help you or companies do, well, whatever you want to do, in the Metaverse. DAPPS (Decentralized Applications) from dozens of companies, NFTs, DeFi (Decentralized Finance), and a vast number of tokens particular to platforms, make the Metaverse a complex and hard-to-understand concept for most, but a constant dose of ‘Meta-verse’ in the news, seems to keep things hopping and almost every tech company has to be looking at a way they can monetize the virtual world, especially when celebrities mention a virtual purchase or one of those virtual real estate trusts mention that they believe the value of their virtual land portfolio is 10x its purchase price.
The Metaverse Group’s (pvt) parent company Token.com (COIN.CN) recently indicated that a 116 parcel estate in the heart of Fashion Street (in Decentraland) sold for an equivalent of $2.5m, or 618,000 ‘mana’, the currency that Decentraland uses, with the idea that the new owner could lease out stores on the parcel, becoming a virtual landlord.. While this sounds like absolute foolishness to many, it does have roots in reality, or almost reality, as speculation in the domain name market when the internet was young, can be likened to what is similar in the Metaverse. Speculators are hoping that their particular piece of virtual real estate will become infinitely more valuable, just as ‘Insurance.com’ ($35.6m) or ‘Hotels.com’ ($11m) became more valuable as the internet expanded. That said, many domain names and tags have been bought for just that purpose, with almost as many essentially worthless today. On sale currently are domain names with the tag ‘.boutique’ ($4.99 for 1 year), ‘.city’ (($7.99), or ‘.dog’ (($9.99), which give some indication as to the volatility that might occur with virtual real estate. There is no free lunch.
Alibaba (BABA) has just set up a subsidiary that is offering ‘platform-as-a-service’ to those seeking to develop their ‘parcels’ or build Metaverse sites and Alibaba’s gaming division launched its own brand in September, offering cloud-based games, and a developer platform within the PAAS framework. This comes despite the government’s stringent new policies about speculation surrounding the Metaverse, which cites virtual real estate as an example of the type of speculation that could lead to significant losses, fraud, illegal fundraising, and money laundering. The policies however are not quite specific enough whe it comes to NFTs (Non-fungible Tokens) or similar virtual currencies, which has left the door open, at least a little bit, for some forms of virtual speculation, and an even wider door for those companies that will provide the tools for building virtual platforms.
The Meta-verse is so new that companies are popping up like mushrooms, ready to help you or companies do, well, whatever you want to do, in the Metaverse. DAPPS (Decentralized Applications) from dozens of companies, NFTs, DeFi (Decentralized Finance), and a vast number of tokens particular to platforms, make the Metaverse a complex and hard-to-understand concept for most, but a constant dose of ‘Meta-verse’ in the news, seems to keep things hopping and almost every tech company has to be looking at a way they can monetize the virtual world, especially when celebrities mention a virtual purchase or one of those virtual real estate trusts mention that they believe the value of their virtual land portfolio is 10x its purchase price.
The Metaverse Group’s (pvt) parent company Token.com (COIN.CN) recently indicated that a 116 parcel estate in the heart of Fashion Street (in Decentraland) sold for an equivalent of $2.5m, or 618,000 ‘mana’, the currency that Decentraland uses, with the idea that the new owner could lease out stores on the parcel, becoming a virtual landlord.. While this sounds like absolute foolishness to many, it does have roots in reality, or almost reality, as speculation in the domain name market when the internet was young, can be likened to what is similar in the Metaverse. Speculators are hoping that their particular piece of virtual real estate will become infinitely more valuable, just as ‘Insurance.com’ ($35.6m) or ‘Hotels.com’ ($11m) became more valuable as the internet expanded. That said, many domain names and tags have been bought for just that purpose, with almost as many essentially worthless today. On sale currently are domain names with the tag ‘.boutique’ ($4.99 for 1 year), ‘.city’ (($7.99), or ‘.dog’ (($9.99), which give some indication as to the volatility that might occur with virtual real estate. There is no free lunch.
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