Meta’s Metaverse Struggles & NFTs At The Webbys
$3 billion in losses at Reality Labs, and the Webbys give awards to NFT creators
Cultured is a newsletter that gets readers up to speed on the most interesting things going on at the intersection of finance, art, collectibles, NFTs, and more. Cultured is produced by Otis, an alternative investment platform that was recently acquired by Public.com.
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🗞 STORIES OF THE DAY
Meta’s metaverse isn’t looking too hot these days
Meta released its quarterly earnings on Wednesday and revealed some worrying news about its metaverse project, Reality Labs. Last quarter, that division lost $3 billion, putting it on track to exceed its losses last year.
The company mostly focused on Facebook’s daily active users stats. It’ll need those users because they pay for Reality Labs’s huge losses by engaging with ads, Meta’s big money maker.
The metaverse is critical to Meta’s success (it even rebranded itself for it). Zuckerberg said during the earnings release that the metaverse project would stunt Meta’s profitability in 2022 and would take until 2030 to show substantive results.
Our Take: As losses mount, Meta is caught between a rock and a hard place.
Meta has the cash on hand to sustain its metaverse project for the time being, but it’ll soon be stuck between its investors, who want to see this moonshot idea turn a profit, and consumers who have plenty of other options for metaverse platforms. The company’s decision to take almost half of virtual asset sales on Horizon Worlds suggests it is looking for ways to become profitable. But by taking such a significant cut, the company risks pushing away customers who can find lower rates on OpenSea, Sandbox, or any of the other major platforms.
The Webby Awards, which give awards for projects on the internet, offered special mentions to NFT projects this year. It’s the first time the awards offered this designation for NFTs (or any art projects, for that matter).
Artist Takashi Murakami received a Special Achievement award for his NFT projects. Those projects include the CloneX collab with RTFKT.
Anil Dash and Kevin McCoy, the creators of the NFT, also received Lifetime Special Achievement Webbys. Dash and McCoy made the prototype at Seven on Seven, a conference for artists and tech professionals, in 2014.
Our Take: The Webby Awards signal a bright future for digital art awards.
The art world is full of grants and awards for artists, from prestigious ones like the Turner Prize to lesser-known prizes. This funding ecosystem helps artists create work without the guarantee of selling it. While the Webby awards don’t come with a financial award, the fact that NFTs are receiving awards points to a bright future for this kind of art funding.
✨ AROUND THE INTERNET
Pairs of virtual sneakers from the Nike x RTFKT collab are selling for around $8,000 each, with the highest going for almost $500,000.
The first American F1 car — a 1960 Scarab Formula 1 — is up for auction. It’s expected to fetch around $1 million.
Topps is releasing its first baseball NFT collection as part of a series of drops throughout the 2022 MLB season.
The only known work by Caterina Angela Pierozzi, one of the only female Renaissance artists, is on display in London.
Weekend read: Do toddlers need NFTs? Some children’s entertainment companies think they do.
