Current Events > The crypto people have a Gamecube graphics bridge in Brooklyn to sell you

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/19/realestate/metaverse-vr-housing-market.html

In March, Gabe Sierra, a contractor whose family has been in the construction business for more than 30 years, will take offers for his latest creation: an 11,000-square-foot mansion with seven bedrooms and a pool in Pinecrest, Miami.

To sweeten the deal, hes throwing in the exact same house and a King Kong-size, bright green gorilla that scales downtown skyscrapers and stalks the streets of South Florida.

The twin home is in the metaverse a catchall phrase for the growing conglomerate of immersive digital worlds where avatars work, play and purchase goods. Pixelated parcels of land are being bought, sold and built upon in a market now worth $1.4 billion, making the metaverse a new frontier for real estate builders and investors.

Mr. Sierra, an avid gamer who uses a purple gorilla as one of his own avatars, paid $10,000 for a digital parcel in an online world called the Sandbox, and then partnered with Voxel Architects, an architecture firm specializing in virtual 3-D properties, to build the digital home to pair with the real thing. It all hits the auction block in March, and hes hoping for a sale price of around $10 million.

Its a project that blends the line between physical and digital to the furthest extent that I could on a residential home, Mr. Sierra said of the house, called Meta Residence One. It pairs a real-world build and expands on it in the digital space. As these technologies get more immersive, its going to make a lot more sense.
Much like real-world real estate, where pricing fluctuates according to the principle of supply and demand, metaverse real estate also operates on a fixed scale. The internet itself may be boundless, but most virtual gaming universes have already been sliced and diced into a set number of parcels, meaning as the number of buyers increases, prices go up as well.

Financial transactions in the metaverse are handled in cryptocurrency and powered by the blockchain a digitally distributed public ledger that eliminates the need for a third party like a bank. Despite the implosion of FTX and projections of a crypto winter, the metaverse real estate market is expected to grow by $5.37 billion by 2026.

In the Sandbox, one of the most popular metaverse worlds and where Mr. Sierra made his $10,000 purchase, much of the virtual land rush has been at the hands of global corporations like Adidas, Atari and Warner Music Group, who have bought spaces to create entertainment, sell goods, launch virtual headquarters and host immersive gatherings for employees and fans.

Last year, the total value of land in The Sandbox, which is sold via a nonfungible token, or NFT, was estimated to be $167 million. And while land purchased directly from the Sandbox goes for about $400 a parcel, theres an active secondary market where prices can be many times that. Proximity to land owned by celebrities and big-name brands drives up prices, too: After Snoop Dogg purchased parcels in the Sandbox and christened them Snoopverse, one buyer paid $450,000 just to become his neighbor.

Land is becoming the infrastructure of the metaverse, said Sebastien Borget, the Sandboxs co-founder. In this ecosystem, there are actors that are developing and offering services for people to find the right land, buy the right land and understand the value of that land.

The metaverse has been around since 2003, when Second Life, a three-dimensional virtual world platform, came onto the scene. But virtual real estate didnt truly take off until late 2021, when Mark Zuckerberg announced that the social media platform formerly known as Facebook would now be called Meta, placing a hyper-public bet on the future of the next digital frontier.

Since then, land sales in the metaverse have climbed into the seven figures, including a virtual estate purchased for $2.4 million in November 2021 in Decentraland and another for $1.65 million in Otherside in May 2022.

And now, in addition to billboards and burger joints for avatars, homes are being constructed on these parcels of land. They dont offer shelter or a place to sleep. But they do offer our increasingly online selves a place to gather and show off.

Buying a piece of real estate for a residential purpose in the metaverse is a kind of prestige, said Kristi Waterworth, a journalist and contributing analyst for The Motley Fool who writes regularly on metaverse real estate.

Here's a Twitter thread on all the ways this article is stupid:
https://twitter.com/LordRavenscraft/status/1627686785298956290?s=20

jeez Im not reading all that

How the fuck is METAVERSE a billion dollar industry? Who the fuck is falling for this garbage?

Who actually are these people spending millions of dollars on virtual houses

chrono625 posted...

How the fuck is METAVERSE a billion dollar industry? Who the fuck is falling for this garbage?

Crypto people

Meta really pushing a shitty Second Life as a multi-billion dollar real estate investment

I wish horrible, horrible things upon these people.

tbqh

I'll just take your word on whatever you're saying about it

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

Well, technically the $10 million is for a real house; not sure why the NYT is treating the digital replica included as a significant driver of the hoped-for purchase price

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]

This one has Mark Zuckerburg wanting to profit off of it. It's only significant in that it is the pet project/business scheme of one of the world's richest people.

I understand it's a drop in the bucket, but for all the dollarydoos put into this even-more-nonsensical-than-typical-nonsensical-securitization, there would have to be hundreds of things, if not thousands, that would at least somewhat work towards the betterment of the species/planet. But no, we get stuck with ape jpegs, lesser memes, and virtual housing.

I can smell a DanielfromSL video coming

Oh wow that entire twitter thread is worth reading. These articles are basically fluff pieces for crypto stake holders.

Nobody seems to even know what those "2.6 million virtual house" purchases even are.

ThePieReborn posted...

I understand it's a drop in the bucket, but for all the dollarydoos put into this even-more-nonsensical-than-typical-nonsensical-securitization, there would have to be hundreds of things, if not thousands, that would at least somewhat work towards the betterment of the species/planet. But no, we get stuck with ape jpegs, lesser memes, and virtual housing.

The invisible hand of the free market has decided that people want ape jpegs

Might be a decent way to launder money I guess