How does a billionaire buy and sell land in the metaverse – 11/04/2022 – Tec

Nearly 2 billion dollars have been spent on virtual land Over the past 12 months, people and companies have been racing to establish themselves in metaversereveals a scan.

But We are years away from the emergence of the metaverse As one immersive online space where people can live, work and play in virtual reality. So, is buying land really a big gamble?

Presentation of my own work

With mohawk-style red hair and a standing cigarette in her mouth, artist Angie Taylor’s avatar doesn’t look like a typical landowner. But she is part of a growing group of people claiming their plot of land in the new virtual worlds.

“I bought my first land in Metaverse in July 2020 and paid about 1,500 euros. I bought it to display my own work, but also to hold Metaverse events that would promote my art and the art of others as well,” she says.

Angie, who is from Brighton, UK, has built two galleries filled with weird and beautiful digital artwork, which are sold in Cryptocurrencyon your own land in the world of Voxels.

Lots of Angie is the size of a small family home (if you compare her to her size as an avatar). The tallest spans over three floors and has a rooftop terrace with a black and white striped walkway, and a pink taxi that comes and goes just for fun.

But you get a real sense of the dimensions of this world from the air.

“Press the F key and you can fly to have a look at my neighborhood,” Angie explains.

Above your gallery you can see thousands of identical plots of land stretching to the horizon.

Voxels is one of dozens of virtual worlds that describe themselves as metaverses. It’s confusing, because people often talk about the “metaverse” as if there was only one. But until one platform takes over, or these disparate worlds come together, companies sell land and expertise in their own versions.

Cryptocurrency

Researchers at DappRadar, who analyze the metaverse, claim that $1.93 billion in cryptocurrency has been spent on the purchase of virtual land in the past year alone, with $22 million on about 3,000 plots of land in Vauxhalls.

DappRadar is able to monitor this because Voxels is built on the ethereum cryptocurrency platform, where, like all virtual currencies, all transactions are recorded and published in blockchain general.

One of the most popular worlds is the cartoon-style Decentraland. Launched in 2020, its plots of land are sold by the thousands, Sometimes millions of dollars. Among those who bought land and built shops and visitor centers there are Samsung, UPS and Sotheby.

Luxury clothing brand Philip Plein also owns a plot the size of four football fields, which it hopes will one day house a store and gallery in Metaverse.

Blaine, the brand’s owner, says his mom isn’t convinced of the $1.5 million purchase.

“My mom called me and said, ‘What did you do?’ Why you are crazy? Why spend so much money, what is it? “

Plein has been selling products in 24 different cryptocurrencies online for over a year. In early 2022, he opened a new store in London, selling clothes and some Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) In exchange for cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as pounds.

He says opening the shop helped him learn more about the metaverse.

“I took the bold step of spending so much on a plot of land,” he says.

“But I’ve been thinking I’ve had my mark for over 24 years, and what should I do if I’m starting over?”

However, with the general decline in the value of cryptocurrencies, DappRadar claims that the metaverse real estate market has been in recession for about a year.

In the Sandbox, Adidas, Atari, Ubisoft, Binance, Warner Music, and Gucci, another way in the crypto ecosystem, are just some of the multinational companies buying land and building expertise to sell and promote their products and services.

Gucci has also built on Roblox, which along with other major gaming platforms like Minecraft and Fortnite, is seen as the most popular among the fledgling platforms.

These lands are not sold by gaming companies, and they are managed without using any blockchain technology. However, they do have a few key components that sci-fi authors say we need to have a true metaverse:

• – Ability to socialize and have fun.
• your coins in the virtual world;
• the opportunity to earn money on the platform;
• vast prosperous communities;

Gucci City has received more than 36 million visits in the year since its launch, while Nike Land has recorded more than 25 million visits in 11 months. In Gucci City, players can buy clothes for their avatar with real money. In Nike Land, they can buy avatar shirts and shoes with the points they earn while playing.

The fashion industry appears to be very interested in taking advantage of the opportunities and risks associated with metaverses.

Amsterdam-based digital-only fashion studio The Fabricant makes clothes just for avatars, creating custom kits and pieces for users of Decentraland, Sandbox, and other cryptocurrencies.

“When we started, we called everyone crazy, because they were like, ‘Why would anyone need this?’ “But we believed very strongly in the idea that people would use digital goods in the future,” says co-founder and lead designer Amber Jae Slooten.

Fabricant’s record sale to date was a digital dress, which fetched $19,000, although it was sold as an NFT – a piece of digital art – and was not worn by the avatar owner.

The company just raised $14 million in funding from investors who are betting on the idea that many of us will soon live a part of our lives in the metaverse.

But it is not certain if and when this will happen. Metaverses in cryptocurrency systems are usually sparsely populated and are really only used when events are being held, and even then only thousands, not millions, of people participate.

Even in the virtual world where Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, is investing billions of dollars, the leaked documents show that people won’t spend much time there.

But Sloten is convinced that as these worlds develop, people will emerge.

“There will definitely be a mass market in this, because if you think about the younger generation, they are already playing games. For them, there is no difference between virtual and real. But that still needs to be built.”

This text was originally published over here.