While the metaverse continues to surge in popularity and has attracted the interest of almost every software company in the world (think Google, Apple, Facebook, Fb, Nvidia, Disney, to mention a few). There is still some scepticism about whether this land rush is going to burst someday.
However, it is good to consider the arguments about why some believe it is an illusion and to present an alternative argument about this.
To write this article, I spent hours on video files, websites, and forums to pick out the arguments that people make against the metaverse land rush and to use my own knowledge and research to provide an alternative opinion.
I will like to add that I respect the views of everyone, and this article is not meant to debunk their arguments but to present the same facts in another light.
A word of fairness
The idea of the metaverse land is still in its infancy. The technology is not fully ready at all. Facebook is even hiring 10,000 engineers to make this mainstream.
So, what this means is that it will not be fair to go hard on an idea while it is still under development. The major players in this industry are still trying to figure this all out.
Another thing you should take note of is that this is exactly how bitcoin started. The idea was rough and everyone (myself included) felt it was some virtual bullshit and we all know how that one turned out.
Sceptics often conclude that the metaverse is an illusion because of the following:
1. The metaverse land is written with computer code, and an infinite amount of it can be created by mere copying and pasting.
Well, while it is true that I can copy a piece of code and replicate it all over the place, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot more work to be done to customize that code, but that aside.
I can write a piece of code to replicate the famous “billionaires’ street” in New York; however, there is only one such street in the entire world. This means that I can certainly create an infinite number of billionaire streets, but the entire earth is not made of billionaire streets. It wouldn’t make any sense to keep replicating things just because you can.
Also, while a developer can indeed replicate land, not all lands are valued equally. You sure can’t compare a parcel of land in downtown LA to another parcel of land on the Sahara desert.
Value will be built into the land, and just as there is a finite number of bitcoins, it is expected that the metaverse land will be finite as most of the people who run the metaverse real estate actually have or have hired veterans in the real world real estate, and these guys understand the importance of scarcity. The developer is just usually told what to do.
Finally, take a step back and consider this: Is the land on Earth truly finite?
How much land can humans occupy? Take a 45 minutes drive from wherever you are, you will sure begin to find land that nobody is crazy about. There is an infinite amount of land in the earth presently, you all just prefer to bunch yourselves up in cities.
2. The metaverse land is not even real
While it is true that the metaverse is not real and you can’t sleep in it like you do in your normal house, you can, however, do real things with it.
For instance, in a popular boxing game on the occulus, a player can wear a vest that has haptic feedback so that if they get punched in the game, they feel a real-life hit (not enough to knock you out though).
People can also meet and go on dates in the metaverse. While people will say it is not actual dating, but how is this different from meeting people on Tinder? This is even like “Tinder plus plus” (as there is already Tinder Plus) as you can go one step further to create a virtual dating experience.
I will wager that the Match Group, which owns Tinder and a suite of other dating apps, will build their own metaverse land.
All this tech is still developing, but I have seen the potential it can have.
3. Metaverse Land is all hype
Well, this is true, but isn’t it how most things in the real world are? Two artists can draw the same item, one could be worth $10M and the other is worth $1000? Can we truly argue that the more expensive one is 10,000 times better than the other one? Isn’t it all about the hype?
We live in a world where things are being hyped a lot, and the more people talk about something, the more its value begins to increase.
That’s why Facebook generates $85B in revenue because people want their product to be hyped. There is another word for it though, they call it MARKETING.
In any case, if you have companies like Amazon, Google, Disney, Unity who are pouring in billions to develop the metaverse and, subsequently, their own metaverse land… You better believe THIS hype.
Should you buy a piece of land?
At this stage, and with the caveat that I am not a financial advisor, you can take the plunge and buy land across a few metaverses to spread the risk. Look, everyone thought bitcoin was madness, lots of people thought NFTs were useless, but see how it turns out.
You can also invest in Metaverse Real Estate Investment Funds and I wrote an article about this.
But what I will seriously consider is to find the tokens thpowerers these metaverses and buy into those.
