Edited by Lu Ming every time
ChatGPT is now out of the loop, but the former “Little Sweets” Metaverse Real Estate is “Mrs. Niu.”
Since the beginning of this year, the price of virtual currency has fallen and the explosive spread of multi-platforms has caused the real estate price of the Metaverse to “crash”. According to data from WeMeta, a metaverse analytics platform, the median transaction price per square meter of land in the Metaverse was US$20 in 2017, but this figure will rise to US$6,000 in 2021.However, the median transaction price of Decentraland, the world’s largest metaverse real estate sales platform, has fallen nearly 90% from $45 in 2022 to $5.
According to media reports,Last November, singer JJ Lynn purchased three virtual properties on Decentraland for US$123,000. The current value is only about US$10,000 and the variable loss is he 91%. In addition to the plummeting prices, JJ Lin’s popularity in these three lands is also “nowhere to be seen”.
JJ Lin’s land purchase record (Image source: Decentraland official website)
On April 9th, #Lin Junjie virtual real estate floating loss 91% purchase# appeared on Weibo’s trending search, sparking heated discussions among netizens.
Metaverse ‘real estate speculators’ lost their entire fortune
With the decline of virtual real estate, a large number of players with a speculative mindset are also beginning to withdraw.
On November 1, 2021, Tianxiaxiu Digital Technology Group launched Honnverse Rainbow Universe, a virtual social metaverse product. This is open to the first batch of users to log in. When I opened it, the server crashed due to too many participants.
According to Tianxiaxiu’s official news, the rainbow space platform will release a total of 350,000 sets of virtual houses. These virtual houses are divided into 13 types of houses depending on the terrain. The distribution volume and rarity differ for each type of housing. There are SSS, SS, S, A, and B grades, and the higher the grade, the rarer it is.
Comparison of past and current prices of SS-class coastal islands (source: second-hand trading platform)
According to a China Securities Journal report on April 8, reporters found on a second-hand trading platform that last year, the most expensive virtual real estate set “SS Ring Sea Island” in the rainbow universe was listed at a price of 500,000. Did. Originally, a total of 15 people “wanted”.
Currently, on the second-hand trading platform and QQ Group, Hongyu universe real estate is almost “one price per day”. Compared with the previous hundreds of thousands of yuan virtual real estate, the current price has shrunk from hundreds to tens of yuan. On the second-hand trading platform, some buyers want to buy the highest level SS-class sea island for 1,500 yuan.
“I withdrew from the rainbow universe virtual real estate transaction. Before that, there were more than 100 sets of properties of various grades in the game. Since last year, virtual real estate has not sold. It shrinks to a size and is difficult to sell,” he said. “House” players told reporters they didn’t expect the popularity of real estate in the metaverse to drop so quickly.
Metaverse ‘real estate speculation’ short-lived
According to a September 2022 Daily Economic News report, the popularity of “real estate speculation” in the metaverse is set to drop sharply, especially after 2022, with more entrants leaving the market and more followers stopping. Since then, it seems short-lived.
Talking about the reasons for the collapse of the Metaverse virtual real estate after 2022, some analysts said, “It is mainly the collapse of global crypto assets, and the Metaverse virtual assets are closely related to the crypto market. It’s related,” he said. In fact, in addition to the collapse of the so-called crypto-assets, the main factors behind the slump in virtual real estate prices, such as hot-spot migration and hot-money outflow, are that the current metaverse is still developing. reflects the In the early stages, the scenario of commercialization and virtual real estate application is very poor, and the game experience based on virtual real estate development is not good enough. good.
The core of the Metaverse’s “real estate speculation” is not the value of the plot, but the value of the virtual space itself, based on the value of the new business model brought about by the industrialization of the Metaverse. We need to wait for the metaverse technology to reach a certain level and achieve industrialization. This allows virtual real estate to embark on a more moderate development trajectory.
Image source: WeChat official account of “Sandbox Chinese Window”
In the view of Wang Dongwei, Director of Zhongtai Capital, purely from the perspective of the project, the awareness of virtual land is advancing and implementation is taking too long.
“The coming of age has one thing in common: the need to solve many life problems or improve the efficiency of life and work. Each era has its good representatives: the Internet, the mobile Internet, e-commerce, etc. There is a lot of room for imagination in the Metaverse, but what is currently being hyped is basically a pseudo-concept.”
Furthermore, from the point of view of the underlying logic, so-called virtual real estate on the Metaverse platform is essentially an NFT. NFTs are digital assets issued based on blockchain technology. Each property is “unique” because property ownership and transaction flow are recorded and cannot be tampered with. For example, at Decentraland, the platform has designed a total of 90,000 parcels, with no plans to add more in the future to ensure the “rarity” of the land.
However, in some cases, such “uniqueness” and “rarity” are “far from” the real economy. The voice of doubt never ceases. However, this scarcity does not necessarily apply to the Metaverse. Because in these virtual worlds you can build unlimited properties. “
According to Hu Jie, director of the Blockchain Financial Law Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, the Metaverse is a simulation of the real world and cannot exist without reality. “The virtual real estate hype in the Metaverse, which was previously particularly popular overseas, especially in South Korea, has now plummeted by 90%. It is completely detached and reduced to a hype of concepts and expectations.Therefore, the development of the Metaverse requires application scenarios coupled with the real economy.”
Daily Economic News Composite China Securities Daily, Everyjing.com (Reporter: Xie Tao)
Cover image source: Data map
