Metaverse Land Grabs 🌇
The metaverse is the new hottest real estate market
Cultured is a newsletter by Otis that gets readers up to speed on the most interesting things going on at the intersection of finance, art, collectibles, NFTs, and more.
🗞 STORY OF THE DAY
The hottest real estate market? The metaverse.
Investment firms are snatching up digital real estate in metaverse worlds like Sandbox and Decentraland, with plans to rent them out to users in the future.
Republic Realm, a digital real estate developer, just paid a record $4.3 million for land in Sandbox. The deal broke a sales record that had been set just a week earlier by Tokens.com.
Deeds for the virtual properties are held as NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain, meaning that companies or individuals can sell or trade them like any other commodity.
Our Take: Early investors in virtual real estate will likely set the tone (and the prices) of future developments in the metaverse.
Real estate is a critical part of most investment portfolios. Owning land allows you to develop it and profit from its use. From a $650,000 yacht in Sandbox to a $2.5 million plot of land in Decentraland’s fashion district (Metaverse Soho?), early adopters see a lucrative opportunity to own some of the most prized spots in the metaverse.
✨ AROUND THE INTERNET
The 2021 word of the year is...drumroll please...NFT. It won out over favorites like “cheugy” and “metaverse.”
Kanye has come a long way from stealing from Gap. His most recent collab with the mall brand, a $90 hoodie, sold out in hours and became Gap’s best selling product.
AMC recently announced it would give a limited-edition NFT to anyone who buys a ticket for the new Spiderman movie. Comic book lovers swarmed, crashing the theater chain’s site.
Democrats have announced the Stopping Grinch Bots Act, a bill that will crack down on resellers using bots to buy up new drops. It’s a shame they chose the worst possible name.
Twitter users think Omicron sounds more like a Transformers villain than a Covid variant.
I want a refund.
🗓 TODAY IN CULTURE
On this day in 2001, Super Smash Bros. Melee was released on GameCube.
The Smash franchise brought together every marquee Nintendo character. Many of these characters starred in games that fetched record sums this past year during the collectible video game boom. To name a few: Mario (ATH: $2m), Pokémon (ATH: $156k), Link of Zelda (ATH: $870k), and Samus of Metroid (ATH: $132k). Melee is widely recognized as the best game in the Smash franchise and king of its esports scene.
