Real estate speculation is not exclusive to the real world: a virtual piece of land in the metaverse is sold for more than 4.3 million

Some people are taking very seriously that the metaverse is the future, to the point that they already plan where they are going to live or choose to buy to speculate. The prospect of these shared virtual worlds being worth some $800 billion by 2024 has boosted its record-breaking real estate sector. The latest is the sale of a parcel of digital land in Sandbox for $4.3 million. A figure that is not ridiculous, taking into account that it exceeds the average price of a home in Manhattan, one of the most expensive cities in the world to live.

The seller was the video game company Atari and the buyer was Republic Realm, a company that invests in and develops real estate in the metaverse. Both companies have confirmed that they plan to partner to develop some of the properties. According to The Wall Street Journal, Republic Realm owns nearly 2,500 pieces of land in 19 different virtual worlds.

It wasn't the only million-dollar acquisition in the metaverse. In late November, a parcel of digital land at Decentralized was sold for $2.43 million in cryptocurrency. The land, a 116-parcel estate in the heart of the Fashion Street district on the decentralized 3D virtual reality platform, has been acquired by The Metaverse Group, a subsidiary of the Tokens.com portal. According to the statement released by the company, the value of the purchase amounts to 618,000 MANA, an Ethereum-based token used by Decentraland users to buy and sell assets. This is the largest public acquisition of metaverse land to date.

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The newly acquired 6,000+ square feet will house fashion shows organized by The Metaverse Group and serve to facilitate commerce within the digital fashion industry. Likewise, the Tokens.com subsidiary's plan involves partnering with existing fashion brands that seek to develop their presence within the metaverse.

In just one week, the purchase of digital land, luxury yachts and miscellaneous assets amounted to 106 million dollars, according to data from DappRadar. Sandbox led the market with $86.56 million in unique sales; followed by Decentraland, with 15.53 million dollars in sales; and CryptoVoxels, which sold digital land for a total of $2.68 million.

The metaverse is the future for many sectors

The potential of the metaverse is not limited to real estate, as the plans of The Metaverse Group demonstrate. These shared virtual worlds could represent an additional 50 billion dollars for the fashion industry by 2030, Morgan Stanley recently said. Luxury brands like Gucci, Burberry, and Louis Vuitton have already jumped on the metaverse bandwagon by launching their own NFTs. Nike, meanwhile, has announced that it will launch digital sneakers at "Nikeland."

According to the latest report from Grayscale, head of the world's largest cryptocurrency fund, the metaverse could be an opportunity worth $1 trillion in annual revenue. In the case of the video game industry, the potential of shared virtual worlds could make it grow to 400,000 million dollars in 2025, compared to nearly 180,000 million dollars in 2020.

For now, the metaverse is in its infancy, but Meta's plans to spend $10bn on its development this year alone is a sign of market potential, Grayscale says. The crypto investment company is the creator of Decentraland, whose cryptocurrency has risen around 550% in the last 30 days, according to Coingecko.