Last edited: Dec 1, 2021

Metaverse is a keyword that has been trending for a few weeks now in the cryptocurrency community and investment communities in general. It has been the forefront of discussions when speaking about the future of crypto, blockchain, and web 3.0 in general, and is becoming a target for influx of investment by web 2.0 giants like Facebook, who recently changed the company’s name to Meta, signifying their desire to explore the endless possibilities (and profit) of the metaverse.

What is the Metaverse?

Metaverse is a “set of interconnected, experiential, 3D virtual worlds where people located anywhere can socialize in real-time to form a persistent, user-owned, internet economy spanning the digital and physical world,” according to the Metaverse report conducted by Grayscale. The Metaverse is still very much in its nascent stages, but many key components of this virtual economy are already under development, including e-commerce, media, entertainment, and even real estate.

What Projects are Happening in the Metaverse?

Currently, the most well-known project is Decentraland (MANA). It is an open-world metaverse where users can log-in to play games, earn the MANA tokens, or create NFTs, giving them real world interoperability for the value of their time spent within the metaverse. Other projects, like Axie Infinity, are mostly game-related, though Meta and many other newcomers are exploring more possibilities beyond gaming-related content. As a sidenote, though BTCC does not offer contracts of MANA, it has gone up more than 500% in the last 30 days, reaching prices above $5.

What’s to Come in the Metaverse?

The total market cap of the leading Web 3.0 Metaverse crypto networks sits at around $27.5 billion, which pales in comparison to the $900 billion market cap of Meta, the $2 trillion market cap of the entire gaming sector, and the $14.8 trillion market cap of Web 2.0 companies that the Metaverse is threatening to disrupt. Seeing that the Metaverse is leading the transformation of the age of Web 3.0, and serving as a bridge towards a future where virtual worlds and real worlds would entangle and intertwine with one another, we could easily seeing explosive and exponential growths within the Metaverse sector, with new and exciting projects launching in this space by new startups and old incumbent Web 2.0 companies alike. This is an exciting space to pay attention to, and investors should note that explosive growth in the Metaverse should lead to overall growth in the crypto market as well, especially altcoins and Ethereum, which are at the forefront of assisting the development of decentralized applications.

ETH price chart over last 24 hours (15 minute intervals)