ViaBTC | What Could Beginners Do to Capture the Metaverse Boom Starting Since 2021

After Facebook changed its name to “Meta”, the metaverse has become the most trending term in the tech, crypto, and investment communities. Around the world, companies started to hire metaverse professionals. As Apple battles with Meta in a war for talent, companies also flocked to register trademarks relating to the metaverse. It thus comes as no surprise that many crypto professionals say that 2021 was the first year of the metaverse era.

As 2022 unfolds, the headline ‘Jay Chou Ventures into the Metaverse’ quickly occupied the front pages, and we have been repeatedly told that he sold 62 million dollars of NFTs in 40 minutes. The metaverse boom hasn’t diminished by one bit. On the contrary, it is expanding. The trending art platform Ezek and Jay Chou’s fashion brand PHANTACi released 10,000 Phanta Bear NFTs and started selling them on January 1. Thanks to celebrity effects, buyers who flocked to the sale even delayed the web page, and the NFTs released in the first round were sold out in about 40 minutes.

You couldn’t be more wrong if you still think of the metaverse as simply a series of avatars. Since NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are unique and cannot be replicated, NFT avatars are natural collectibles, and also the best carrier of value in the metaverse economic system.

Yet, in addition to the NFT avatars, the metaverse also boasts many other interesting scenarios. For instance, in the metaverse, you can go to a live virtual concert. Considering the worldwide impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, countries have introduced different levels of restrictions on large gatherings. Unable to go to real-world concerts, folks turned their attention to cyberspace, which is where the metaverse shines. In November 2021, Justin Bieber held a 30-minute metaverse concert on the virtual music platform Wave with stunning stage effects, which attracted more than 10.7 million viewers worldwide.

Featuring sunshine, wheat fields, and fireflies slowly flying in the sky, the concert is glowing with rich gold, and the movements are also restored to every last detail. For example, how he shakes his legs and holds the microphone, familiar to all Bieber fans, is vividly reproduced. As virtual concerts become a major trend, a growing number of singers have decided to go online. Travis Scott, for instance, held a metaverse concert in Fortnite where the audience could sink under the sea to watch the performance or go into outer space to enjoy the music under zero gravity. Roblox also hosted a metaverse concert that featured well-known singers such as Lil Nas X and Zara Larsson.

Apart from concerts, the “land” in the metaverse has also won the favor of many celebrities, industry leaders, and institutional investors. Republic Realm, a digital investment company, spent $4.3 million on a plot in The Sandbox in December 2021. In the same month, Zheng Zhigang, CEO of a Hong Kong real estate giant, also said that he will buy a plot of virtual land for $5 million. Famous singers like Snoop Dogg and JJ Lin also bought real estates in the metaverse, which led to a price surge of the surrounding plots. Some fans spent as much as $500,000 to buy a piece of land just to be their neighbors.

Compared with the major impact of locations on property prices in the real world, the key to price growth for real estates in the metaverse seems to be user traffic — Trends created by celebrities or big institutions attract people to line up for a property in the metaverse. Moreover, the things you can do on a virtual plot are only limited to your imagination. You can build replicas of classic buildings in reality, as well as museums, libraries, recreational facilities, etc.

After learning these scenarios, do you still think of the metaverse as just pictures? Although the big shots could spend money like water and invest millions of dollars without hesitation, newbies like you and me cannot afford to bet all our money on a project. That said, what can we do to benefit from the opportunities presented by the metaverse?

information gaps. However, if you have neither a discerning eye nor a deep pocket, you can always go for free experiences: Go check out a free Bieber concert, and feast your eyes on JJ Lin’s virtual mansion in The Sandbox. You can also try out some new projects, and perhaps someday when they finally succeed you will be rewarded with airdrops.

*The above content cannot be relied on as investment advice.