The idea of spending millions on land that only exists on the internet may sound ridiculous, but the fury sparked by it metaverso, a future of virtual reality, are encouraging some investors to buy digital real estate.
This week, the New York company Republic Realm announced a $ 4.3 million operation to purchase digital land in The Sandbox, one of several “virtual worlds” websites where people can socialize, play games or go to concerts.
In late November, the Canadian cryptocurrency firm Tokens.com it had acquired land on rival platform, Decentraland, for $ 2.4 million. Days earlier, Barbados had announced a plan to open a “metaverse embassy” in Decentraland.
These types of portals are promoted as prototypes of the metaverse, an internet of the future where current online experiences such as talking with a friend will feel as if they were face to face thanks to virtual reality devices.
The word “metaverse” has been very much in vogue in Silicon Valley for months, but interest multiplied in October when the parent company of Facebook it was renamed “Meta” in its strategy of betting on virtual reality.
Facebook’s renaming “introduced the term ‘metaverse’ to millions of people much faster than I ever would have imagined,” he says. Cathy Hackl, a technology consultancy that advises companies to enter the metaverse.
The data web Dapp collects that, in the last week, virtual lands valued at more than 100 million dollars were sold in the four main sites of the metaverse: The Sandbox, Decentraland, CryptoVoxels and Dream Space.
Hackl is not surprised by this boom, which is accompanied by the development of an entire digital real estate ecosystem, from developers to rentals.
“We try to transfer the way we understand physical goods to the virtual world,” he tells AFP.
And although it will take time for these websites to operate as true metaverses, their digital terrain already functions as a real life asset.
“You can build on it, you can rent it, you can sell it,” says Hackl.
“The fifth Avenue”
Tokens.com bought an excellent parcel in the Fashion Street district of Decentraland, which the platform wants to promote as the headquarters of virtual stores of luxury brands.
“If I hadn’t researched and understood that this is valuable property, this would seem absolutely insane,” admits the CEO of Tokens.com, Andrew Kiguel.
For him, who spent 20 years in investment banking focused on real estate, the Decentraland operation is governed by the same criteria as in real life: it is a fashionable and busy area.
“It is a space for advertising and events where people are going to congregate,” he said, taking as an example a recent music festival on that platform that attracted 50,000 spectators.
Luxury brands are beginning to enter this parallel world: a virtual Gucci bag was sold on the Roblox platform in May for a higher price than the real version.
Kiguel hopes that Fashion Street will become a kind of Fifth Avenue in New York.
Your land can make you money as ad space or even “having a store with a real employee,” he explains.
“You can enter with your avatar and have 3D digital renderings of a shoe that you can hold, and ask questions “to the clerk, he counts.
“A little absurd”
Back in 2006, a real estate developer made headlines after making a million dollars with virtual terrain sold in the famous Second Life. But there is a key difference between that still-active platform and those of the new generation.
At Decentraland, everything from grounds to virtual works of art comes in the form of non-expendable tokens (NFT). Some people have spent tens of thousands of dollars on these digital items that have generated skepticism and excitement.
Kiguel foresees that this form of digital property will be very expanded in the coming years, because the “blockchain” technology behind it creates trust and transparency when doing transactions.
“I can see the history of ownership, how much has been paid for it and how it has been transferred,” he says.
But it is not an investment without risk, particularly due to the volatility of the cryptocurrencies used to buy NFT and because the value of these investments depends on the number of users of these platforms, for now far from Facebook or Instagram.
“It all sounds a bit absurd,” Kiguel acknowledges. “But there is a vision behind.”
Reference-www.eleconomista.com.mx