Life on other worlds is possible and it is not necessary to leave Earth to experience it. The virtual plane created its own realities from video games, for example, where people led alternate lives. And while they weren’t as immersive, that technology has evolved. Now, metaverses are spaces where people do not make another life, but extend their own.
According to Jorge Alnor, CEO of the BNN Digital agency, “they are alternative worlds that we have built, where we have generated systems of social coexistence, product exchange and even various examples of economic activity.”
In March of this year, to cite a real estate case, the House of Mars was sold for more than 500,000 dollars in Ethereum and no, it is not on the red planet, but it is a Non-Fungible Token (NFT, for its acronym in English), whose buyer can use as a home within a metaverse, such as Decentraland or Somnium Space.
In this sense, the buyer of the work of the crypto artist Beeple that was auctioned at Christie’s or who acquired the first publication of the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, could expose them in a virtual art gallery or in their homes.
According to analyst Matthew Ball, the worlds of Minecraft or Fortnite could also be considered as metaverses, however, one of the great differentiators from other spaces is that they have been linked to blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies to take full advantage of the market.
The business opportunity within these virtual universes, explains Alor, is that “part of what takes place in real life is going to have a double entry” and, therefore, the ways in which money moves in space physical will be similar within metaverses.
Data from the Reuters news agency highlight that in addition to houses, within multiverses such as Somnium Space, 41,000-square-meter plots have been sold for $ 572,000. Even Bloomberg has reported on the interest of real estate investors to acquire properties in Genesis City, a city created in 2017 within Decentraland, a world that in March reported on its 10,000 active users per day.
Prepare for the future
Faced with such a turbulent context, the most sensible response, experts say, is to keep an open mind to receive the future without prejudice, as these realities will take more and more strength and, therefore, will mainly impact the values of younger generations. linked to these issues.
Nowadays, “children’s lives take place in metaverses, like Minecraft or Roblo,” says Alor. “All of them are used to those worlds and in 10 or 15 years, they will be ready to live or work in the metaverses”, which will continue to be developed by investors who trust them.
A month ago, Atari decided to open a virtual casino in Decentraland and during its opening DJ Dillon Francis participated, in addition to being attended by more than 3,500 people located in different parts of the world. “An amazing moment for the metaverse,” tweeted the official Decentraland account after the presentation.
For non-digital natives, spending money in these worlds is incomprehensible, but it is common for younger generations, such as centennials, who see it as normal to buy clothes for their avatars in video games and, in fact, represents an evolution of that market.
Jonah Stillman, co-founder of the GenZ consulting group, explains this phenomenon from the fact that the youngest “have never known a world without technology. The real world and the virtual world have always overlapped for us ”.
Although, like cryptocurrencies, NFTs or even .com in their early days, many people consider this market to be a bubble that will burst at some point. One of their arguments is that digital real estate is not tied to anything of value in the physical world.
However, Abraham Cobos, Bitso’s crypto catalyst, mentions that these types of products did not become famous overnight and, therefore, they will not disappear in the same way. It also highlights that all the infrastructure around it must be analyzed, as well as the effects it is generating.
“In the next 10 years we will experience a lot of changes and it will be very important to be flexible in thinking”, concludes Alor, “because our values are going to be attacked and if we are very tough, these realities are going to break us”.
