You will become the official owner of that virtual property, and anyone can verify its authenticity on the blockchain. The big winners—at the moment, at least—are the platforms and developers, who are raking in investment dollars from early buyers. Animoca Brands, the company behind The Sandbox, recently reported it is now worth $5 billion, up from a valuation just over $2 billion in 2021.
Digital real estate seems to work similarly to the demand and supply of physical property, where supply and demand and scarcity drive property prices up or down. Metaverses also offer only limited plots of land, which means unique investment opportunities are present. Owning a plot of virtual land means you get the right to build anything you want on that property.
Jamie is part of the Content Marketing team at Redfin and has spent 2+ years writing about climate change, housing affordability, and the housing market. He fell in love with writing in college, where he decided he wanted to help others understand complicated topics. He was born and raised in Seattle, where he currently lives with his wife and three pets. His dream home is a small, modern house in the forest where he can hear the wind blowing at night.
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For brands, it could mean something much more interactive and active than their current digital presences. For individuals, it could mean earning income by playing games or selling products. Virtual lands are digital images and programmable spaces on different metaverse platforms where users can build and design their houses, virtual NFT art galleries, stores, virtual event spaces, and more.
Top metaverse platforms to buy virtual land on
For security, Baue told Fortune that it’s important for landowners to back up their land onto a hardware wallet to protect against theft. Once you get a wallet, you will need to exchange U.S. dollars (or whatever currency you’re using) for a cryptocurrency. You can easily buy Ether, the most commonly used crypto for land purchases, in the MetaMask Google Chrome extension using your debit or credit card. MetaMask will direct you to the crypto exchanges Wyre or Transak to complete the purchase. Keep in mind that both Wyre and Transak charge a processing fee for converting U.S. dollars to Ether (or other types of cryptocurrencies).
Developing entertainment infrastructure is just one way how do you journalize a bank statement the metaverse will change entertainment. The purchase will go through as long as you have sufficient funds in your wallet and the price is agreed upon. If you want comprehensive information about where you’re buying your virtual property, it’s best to go with Sandbox or Decentraland. For this guide, we’ll be using Decentraland, though the steps are largely similar across all platforms. Each plot of land represents an immutable record on the Ethereum blockchain, allowing users to create whatever they want with their property without interference from third parties. The concept of virtual land is similar to physical land, except it isn’t tangible.
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Other factors, such as our own proprietary website rules and whether a product is offered in your area or at your self-selected credit score range, can also impact how and where products appear on this site. While we strive to provide a wide range of offers, Bankrate does not include information about every financial or credit product or service. In the fall of 2021, Facebook announced it would change its corporate name to Meta, signaling its increasing focus on the metaverse. The move lent some credibility to the idea of the metaverse, helping spark a boom in virtual real estate. It didn’t hurt that many cryptocurrencies also reached all-time highs in November 2021.
In many cases, you will have to purchase land on the secondary market. It’s a good idea to create an OpenSea.io account to do so by connecting your Chrome browser wallet before you go shopping. There’s always the question of how to assign value to a land whose scarcity is artificial and whose future value cannot be quantified. With their value dependent on highly volatile cryptocurrencies, metaverse land is susceptible to volatile conditions as well. Although the metaverse is expected to grow tremendously in the next few years, it is still a relatively new industry that is far from stable.
The Sandbox and Decentraland both sell land directly, but on the Sandbox land is released by the company in waves, the most recent of which was on Dec. 2. Because of high demand, these waves often sell out in seconds, said Ryan Baue, cofounder of MetaMetric Solutions. Before you decide to invest in digital real estate on any platform, you need to understand what a digital plot is. People buy and sell real estate in the metaverse with cryptocurrencies, most commonly Bitcoin and Ethereum. One of the metaverse’s founding principles was to be a platform that didn’t depend on large, centralized companies. Therefore, it needed a decentralized currency, like cryptocurrency, for the platform to function.
You could build revenue-generating services like casinos, clubs, stores, or event spaces, where you could either hold events, rent the space out for events, or rent it out to someone else to build on it to earn passive income. Buying land next to celebrities or investing in virtual real estate to earn from rent is all the same in the virtual metaverse world, except that it is digital. Like in a real-life scenario, some areas and cities are more desirable and expensive, some up-and-coming and more affordable. Buying and selling virtual real estate is fairly straightforward once you’ve decided you’d like to make a purchase.
- And in fact, the term “metaverse” comes from Neil Stevenson’s novel 1982, Snow Crash.
- On most platforms, plots of “land” are represented by X and Y coordinates on a map that makes up the entirety of a metaverse world.
- In many cases, you will have to purchase land on the secondary market.
- But those platforms are not the only places to purchase plots, and as more people realize the power of buying in the metaverse, more platforms will likely come available.
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Less than a year ago, the average price for the smallest plot of land available to buy on Decentraland or the Sandbox – two of the biggest metaverse platforms – was under $1,000. Metaverse real estate gives users a place to connect online with other people. Creators can monetize the content of their property by charging for access or trading their NFTs. Brands can use their virtual properties to advertise services, organize virtual product launches, and provide unique customer experiences. For real estate investors, these parcels of digitized land offer a lucrative opportunity. Just like in real-life, metaverse properties can be developed and flipped or leased.
Fast-forward three decades later, in 2010, entrepreneur Palmer Luckey built the first revolutionary VR headset called Oculus Rift VR, and in 2014, Facebook acquired the company in a $2 billion deal. Then, in 1838, the first concept of a single 3D image by scientist Charles Wheatstone surfaced, which led to the creation of technology that uses depth illusion to create an image. There you can decide on things like the price, how close it should be to the central hubs, and what kind of potential it has. Virtual real estate is still a relatively new phenomenon, but it has experienced some periods of rapid growth in its early existence.