Today JP Morgan’s Onyx blockchain division published a short report on the Metaverse and revealed it acquired a piece of virtual property in Decentraland.
Decentraland is one of four major blockchain metaverses that sell virtual land. The others are The Sandbox, Cryptovoxels, and Somnium Space. Although Decentraland has been around the longest, The Sandbox has attracted the most sales and value nowadays. It’s also signed up big brands, including Warner Music.
JP Morgan reports that average land prices across these four metaverses jumped from $6,000 in June 2021 to $12,000 six months later.
So what is a bank like JP Morgan doing exploring metaverses? Covid has seen us spending more time on our computers, and metaverse proponents believe much of that activity will end up in virtual worlds. Some of the team at Ledger Insights was involved in virtual worlds 15 years ago, and most failed to take off, including offerings from Google and Sony. But there’s no question that game worlds such as Roblox exist and will evolve.
The paper explores some of the financial services needed in the metaverse, including wallets, integration with traditional payments, and foreign exchange. Mortgages are a pretty big aspect of financial services, and funding land in a virtual world potentially will be too.
One of the co-authors of the report is Christine Moy, who heads up Liink (formerly IIN), the Onyx blockchain solution that addresses bank payment frictions. The report reveals that she is also now responsible for crypto and the metaverse.
