It’s Here, So Let’s Get To Work On The Metaverse

Bear mar­ket: Those who wait until the cryp­to win­ter has thawed to build the Meta­verse will be late to the game, says Sam Huber, the CEO of Land­vault.

The cryp­tocur­ren­cy mar­ket plunged into a bear mar­ket in late 2021. Even now, after a 73% drop in the val­ue of the glob­al mar­ket cap since November’s heady peak, there is in all like­li­hood more pain to come. 

Amid this fall, the entire dig­i­tal asset sec­tor stands on the precipice of the emerg­ing Meta­verse. It is an inter­con­nect­ed net­work of vir­tu­al worlds where any­one can build a world of their choos­ing or con­tribute to another.

The buzz around the meta­verse con­cept has seen numer­ous banks, cor­po­ra­tions, brands, and celebri­ties start­ing to grap­ple with this new vir­tu­al fron­tier. But dur­ing the mete­oric rise of the cryp­to space in the sum­mer of 2021, it wasn’t easy to tell the ded­i­cat­ed builders from the short-term opportunists. 

Now, there’s less mon­ey flow­ing around the cryp­to space than at any time in the past 18 months. So the bear mar­ket will act as a cru­cible that forges only the most seri­ous, long-term meta­verse projects.

Despite their neg­a­tive con­no­ta­tions, bear mar­kets make for an oppor­tune time for both buy­ing assets and, per­haps more impor­tant­ly, devel­op­ing new projects. When cryp­to is down, fiat cap­i­tal can go a long way in build­ing the infra­struc­ture for a new platform.

In fact, much of the ground­work for the NFT boom seen in 2021 was laid down in the years fol­low­ing the 2018 mar­ket crash. Many investors couldn’t care less at the time, but pas­sion­ate cre­ators used this lull to mint their first offer­ings. These saw pro­found increas­es in val­u­a­tion that occurred after dig­i­tal artist Beeple’s first major sale. 

The NFT wave has already risen and rolled back some­what, but there’s anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ment just over the hori­zon: The Meta­verse. Pow­ered by the devel­op­ments of pre­vi­ous cycles, includ­ing a var­ied ecosys­tem of cryp­tocur­ren­cies and NFTs, the Meta­verse will be a com­plete, inter­lock­ing series of vir­tu­al worlds and ser­vices. It will allow for the seam­less trans­fer of data and val­ue between them. 

Bear Market Advantages

The bear mar­ket means that the cost of pur­chas­ing dig­i­tal land is down. The upside poten­tial is high for those to start cre­at­ing val­ue through build­ing now. 

There may nev­er be a bet­ter time to get involved in cre­at­ing a meta­verse project. Despite the state of the mar­ket, brands from Nike and Gap to Meta (for­mer­ly Face­book) and even banks like HSBC and JPMor­gan are start­ing to build a pres­ence in the metaverse.

The entrance of these names sig­nals more than a tran­sient fad; these play­ers will have formed a long-term strat­e­gy, under­stand­ing the risks before jump­ing headfirst.

More­over, Wall Street’s biggest invest­ment banks are already plac­ing bets on the val­ue of the meta­verse. JPMor­gan believes that the meta­verse could pull in over a tril­lion dol­lars in year­ly rev­enues. And Citi takes an even more bull­ish stance, antic­i­pat­ing the meta­verse to be worth $13 tril­lion by 2030, with a reach of over 5 bil­lion users. 

Bear Market: What Will Happen in 2022

With the recent slash­es to total mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion, the first bear mar­ket since 2018 is well and tru­ly upon us. But even the cold­est win­ters even­tu­al­ly thaw. 

One sil­ver lin­ing comes in the form of the next Bit­coin halv­ing event, which will see min­ing rewards – i.e., Bitcoin’s annu­al sup­ply – cut in half once more. Bit­coin still acts as a major mar­ket mover. The shift in sup­ply and demand brought about by these qua­dren­ni­al halv­ing events has, so far, proven to help increase the price in the months after they occur. Hence, a bear mar­ket is not all too sur­pris­ing, as it fits with the typ­i­cal mar­ket cycle observed over the last decade.

How­ev­er, there’s also the fact that cryp­to has proven to be more or less cor­re­lat­ed to many tra­di­tion­al invest­ments. Years ago, it was hoped that dig­i­tal assets would act more as a hedge when the stock mar­ket fell. But that hasn’t been the case. Instead, cryp­to is treat­ed much like any oth­er “high risk” invest­ment and tends to be one of the first assets to be shed when the mar­ket worsens. 

Broader Financial Markets

The fact that the broad­er finan­cial mar­ket has been in a slump late­ly, exac­er­bat­ed by macro events such as the Fed’s ongo­ing com­mit­ment to inter­est rate hikes, has more than like­ly aggra­vat­ed the dip that was plau­si­bly already com­ing. While investors need to be ready for the bears to hang around for a while, it isn’t all bad news.

Those who wait until there is already a shift in pub­lic sen­ti­ment will be late to the game and will like­ly find them­selves rush­ing to catch up. By bring­ing togeth­er robust tal­ent and a strong vision for what the Meta­verse can offer, devel­op­ers have the poten­tial to build gen­er­a­tional val­ue, which is a chance that doesn’t come around very often.

About the Author

Sam Huber is the CEO of Land­vault, for­mer­ly known as Admix. Land­vault is the biggest builder in the meta­verse with 100+ spe­cial­ist design­ers and devel­op­ers. Sam is a blockchain investor since 2013, hav­ing per­son­al­ly invest­ed in over 20 com­pa­nies, and var­i­ous vir­tu­al land projects since 2017. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he was run­ning an indie game stu­dio and in a pre­vi­ous life, was a For­mu­la One engineer.

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Disclaimer

All the infor­ma­tion con­tained on our web­site is pub­lished in good faith and for gen­er­al infor­ma­tion pur­pos­es only. Any action the read­er takes upon the infor­ma­tion found on our web­site is strict­ly at their own risk.