Will you build your next house on the metaverse?

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What’s the point of a house if not to provide shelter? What can you do with a virtual sofa if you can’t sit on it? It’s probably as impractical as buying land on the moon from Lunar Land.

But imagine living in a virtual world where you discover people chatting by fountains, shoppers in fashion boutiques, joggers on seaside promenades, casino dealers inviting guests to high-stakes poker.

If I took that pitch to a few VC firms today and said it was a new blockchain metaverse, I’d probably raise a hundred million dollars. I’d just have to avoid telling them that that virtual world is called Second Life, which has been around since 2003.

Today’s big story will help you figure out how things have changed since 2003, and if you should hodl on investments in the hot virtual land market or flip it for a tidy profit.

Today we look at:

• The boom in real estate on the metaverse
• A Tiger Global-backed firm that aims to tap into the fragmented global shipping industry
• Other newsy highlights such as Binance’s deal for the Grammy Awards and Singapore-based Carzuno’s entry into Thailand.

Also, if you’re looking to invest some time into making land in the real world greener, do fill out this CDP x Tech in Asia questionnaire survey and join our growing list of companies that are en route to going greener.

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Heading for the moon

Image credit: Timmy Loen

Demand for virtual land on the Metaverse is skyrocketing, and in the last week of November 2021 alone, the industry saw a record number of of metaverse real estate transactions. There has been a lot of discussion around the boom of virtual land, primarily because something that isn’t tangible does not count as “land.” However, digital art is still considered art, and there is no reason why digital land would not have inherent value.

• The big guns: Virtual land firms have been backed by household names like Andreessen Horowitz, Coinbase Ventures, Animoca Brands, Dapper Labs, and Lightspeed Venture Partners, and a slew of celebrities, including The Weeknd, singer Marc Anthony, and actor Will Smith. Musicians like Ariana Grande, Travis Scott, Lil Nas X, and The Weeknd have also held concerts on virtual land.

• The busier, the better: The Sandbox has proven to have the busiest property market by transaction volume. It saw 65,000 digital land transactions worth US$350 million in 2021. That’s more than 3x the number of real estate transactions in Decentraland, which logged 21,000 virtual real estate transactions worth US$110 million in the same period.

Quite an oar-deal

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