Is this real life or is it just a fantasy? Sales of “real estate” in the so-called Metaverse – digital renderings of properties locate...
Is this real life or is it just a fantasy?
Sales of “real estate” in the so-called Metaverse – digital renderings of properties located on one of four major virtual platforms – topped $500 million last year, according to MetaMetric Solutions, and the market could soon become a trillion dollar company in the near future, according to experts.
Celebrities like Snoop Dogg, Paris Hilton, and Justin Bieber have all purchased property in the metaverse in recent times. And just like in the real world, they’re attracting star-crazed neighbors, with one buyer recently shelling out $450,000 in real money to own a property virtually returned next door to Snoop.
An actual four-bedroom home in Gulfport, Florida recently sold for $653,163 as a non-fungible token, or NFT, making it the first physical home to be sold in this way.
The digital real estate craze has gotten so big that now big investors and real estate companies are getting into the business.
But is virtual real estate the ultimate new game or are these investors playing themselves?
Financial District resident and NFT hype-man Samuel Arnold, 30, invested just $294 in three virtual plots of land that are now valued at $59,000 a few months later.
Arnold, an entrepreneur who owns a crypto and NFT advisory management company, says that “buying real estate in the metaverse right now is like buying real estate and land in Manhattan in 1812. “.
“In 1990 they said you were going to buy your shoes online and people thought you were smoking DMT,” Arnold said. “I’ll hold on until my grandkids grow up and I own the next Grand Central.”
In November, a virtual plot of land sold for $4.3 million in “The Sandbox” (a virtual platform) – setting a price record for metaverse real estate.
Another plot on play-to-earn gaming platform Axie Infinity has sold for $2.3 million. But the cheapest land in the metaverse, a 96 square meter 1 by 1 land in the Sandbox platform now goes for $13,000according to a recent Fortune report.
A 16 square meter lot commands the same price in Decentraland, another popular metaverse platform. This is more than tenfold compared to a few months ago.
Metaverse properties can look like anything from simple gray squares seen as plots of land to complex replicas of society with neighborhoods and houses that have furniture, shops with stocked shelves, carnivals with rides and games, and more, depending on how owners choose to invest in and develop their land.
There are even metaverse architects and designers who will build you a house (or 10) on virtual land.
Projects can cost between $10,000 and $300,000 on average, depending on the virtual design company, Bileca.
The massive and relatively inexpensive upside barrier of virtual property has attracted many investors eager to become the Harry Macklowe, Stephen Ross or Gary Barnett of the internet.
“Many of us may not have had enough capital to buy physical real estate and I see this as a good bet for building wealth, knowledge and property in the new on-going Web3 environment. construction,” said Chris Adamo, co-founder of Flamingo Capital. , a Web3-focused venture capital fund native to Queens, which is tethered to the physical world in Miami.
He owns about four dozen virtual properties spread across numerous metaverse worlds and he claims the value of his network of properties has increased tenfold over the past year.
But while many are optimistic, others smack of BS.
“The virtual earth is a pyramid scheme that has reappeared two or three times since Second Life in the early 2000s,” said Edward “Ted” Castronova, a media professor at Indiana University in Bloomington, known in particular for his work on synthetic economies. worlds. “An NFT or virtual land ensures that you and you alone are the owner of that particular piece of nothing. Want a solid game? Buy shares in game companies. Gaming companies are actually attracting eyeballs to their virtual landscapes. »
The stock market also seems skeptical. Facebook’s stock price fell 22% after announcing it had invested $10 billion in its massive metaverse project.
Whether metaverse real estate is the next bubble or our dystopian future, digital land sales show no signs of slowing down.
Danny Shamooil, CEO of Voro, a cloud-based real estate brokerage, compared the Metaverse to the early days of Netflix.
“When Blockbuster shut down, you had no choice but to download Netflix,” he said. “People do no good with change. But they adapt, learn and learn. People are learning to open wallets and use crypto more frequently. »
Shamooil’s business is subscription-based and entirely remote. It has nearly 1,000 brokers in seven states advising people on what kind of land to buy and where — a memorabilia business, for example, might want a storefront near meta Disney — as well as how to fund portfolios. ways to buy land and how to facilitate real estate transactions.
Personally, Shamooil owns meta lots and yachts in Decentraland, the cost or value of which he would not disclose, but acknowledges that their value has increased three to five times in the last year since he purchased them. .
“It’s very early days, but the future looks bright,” Shamooil said. “Nothing is set in stone. There are a lot of changes that people are going to have to adapt to in the long term before it becomes mainstream.
For most people, metaverse real estate is still a tough sell. “Real” real estate has a use. It provides shelter. “Real” real estate is valuable because of its scarcity. But metaverse real estate won’t keep you warm in the winter, and there’s theoretically an endless supply.
But that will not discourage believers.
“History has always been written by the winner,” Arnold said. “Whoever wants it the most, gets it.”
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