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How Developing Countries Predicted the Rise of the MetaverseThe market is down right now but these are also good times to take a look at what might be the "next big thing". Had you got into the metaverse a year ago, you will most likely be up right now. Otherwise, you're probably in the red. (Yes, even Bitcoin and Ethereum.) The metaverse is this year's clear winner in terms of performance, and it's not too surprising that a lot of big name brands have decided to try to get in on it, too. A lot of people claim that Zuckerberg's "Meta" was what sparked the metaverse craze, but if you look at AXS's chart it's pretty clear that the coin was climbing way before the media gave the idea any attention. A lot of innovations and early-adoption activities happen in lesser-known (often non-English speaking and developing) countries before making its way into the "mainstream", so to speak. Predicting long-term trends is not magic - you just need to know where to look.
COINBASE:MANAUSDLong
by RyanTanaka
Virtual vs Real Estate - The Metaverse, NFTs, and Induced DemandAfter China's real-estate market took a nose dive this year, a lot of people are anticipating the same might occur in the US in the near future as the repercussions of the former start to affect the latter. Noone is quite sure what's actually going to happen, but so far the forecasts haven't been looking too good for US assets and the USD in an overall sense. At the same time, we've seen a renewed interest in "virtual real-estate" -- even Mark Zuckerberg is talking about the "metaverse", so to speak. Are we about to see a spike in demand in these platforms in the near future? I do think that the future of crypto is not making money off of coins themselves, but taking a risk on the products built underneath them. Some quick impressions of each metaverse: Cryptovoxels - It looks and feels like "crypto Minecraft" -- the interface is a little rough and the loading times can sometimes be too much, but it does have a lot of energy and inspiration behind them. Kind of like what the "art districts" used to be like in the real-world, I think. Decentraland - been around the longest and it does show. They have onboarding tutorials, the UI isn't perfect but it's mostly worked out, and has a nice balance between goofyness and a professional decelopment. (You can find the DOGE museum in the museum district there, for example.) But the rent here is not cheap, at least from what I've seen so far. Somnium Space - this metaverse feels like it was built by a bunch of MBAs who worked for a real-estate company prior. The listings, marketing, and style of it feels that way too -- and they're listing themselves as a "high-end" product so don't expect it to be cheap. But it does have a professional and clean feel to the whole thing, which may work for some. The SandBox - I didn't mention this in the video since they don't seem to have a working demo yet, but they have been successful in raising funds from investors as of this week. How they do, is TBD. But it's also proof that there is interest in the space even from an investor's standpoint.
COINBASE:ETHUSDLong
by RyanTanaka