Source: Xinhua.
The hottest property market at the moment is not in any city. It is in the metaverse.
Virtual land selling for the price of Manhattan real estate sounds absurd, but it is happening. The most expensive plot to date went for USD 4.3 million (about 27.4 million yuan) on the virtual gaming platform The Sandbox, breaking the previous record of USD 2.43 million set on Decentraland.
Ask most people what the metaverse actually is and few can say clearly, yet everyone is curious. Internet buzzwords have grown more obscure by the wave. Stripped of the packaging, the metaverse is internet life as we know it, rebranded 2.0, given a handsome price tag and put back on the shelf.
Game developers, brands, luxury houses and celebrities are all joining in, and many investors smell a trend. But one property of virtual space is abundance: there is no physical limit to metaverse land. In theory supply can be unlimited, so how could prices hold value?
One answer is that exclusivity is scarce even in virtual space. In games you already sell gear and identities; in the metaverse, land is another form of both. The record-setting plot happens to border a virtual mansion of a famous rap star. Whether in the real or the virtual world, exclusive location is scarce, and scarcity has value. Membership in a famous golf club corresponds to no physical asset either, but owning it means playing a round with a tycoon.
Consider another analogy. When OICQ launched in 1999, accounts were as free as tap water, and everyone assumed virtual accounts would always be plentiful. Who imagined that twenty years later, six-digit QQ accounts would resell at high prices? A promising platform is like the fishing village of Shenzhen half a century ago: once the crowds arrive, empty land appreciates. A hopeless platform is like an empty desert: the land is free, and nobody comes.
If the metaverse ultimately proves less thrilling than advertised, the rap stars and land speculators will pack up and the bubble will burst. But if the metaverse turns out to be compelling enough to pull everyone in, virtual land will appreciate like a rare QQ number or a prime WeChat ad slot; the land may be virtual, but its scarcity is real.
In a word, metaverse real estate burns on the firewood everyone else piles on. Every click on a metaverse story adds another stick. Whether it stays hot, heaven only knows.
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