daily economic news
2023-04-09 11:51:49
Edited by Lu Ming every time
ChatGPT is now crazy out of the circle, but the former “Little Sweets” – Metaverse Real Estate has become “Mrs. Niu”.
Since the beginning of this year, with the decline in the price of virtual currency and the explosion of multiple platforms, the prices of real estate properties in Metaverse have also “collapsed”. According to data from WeMeta, a Metaverse analysis platform, the median transaction price per square meter of land in Metaverse was US$20 in 2017, and 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 dropped from $45 in 2022 to $5, a drop of nearly 90%.
According to media reports,In November last year, singer JJ Lin bought three pieces of virtual real estate in Decentraland for US$123,000. The current value is only about US$10,000, with a floating loss of 91%. In addition to the sharp drop in prices, JJ Lin’s popularity in these three lands is also “nowhere to be seen”. According to the weekly visits provided by the platform, almost no one cares about these three lands.
JJ Lin’s record of purchasing land (Image source: Decentraland official website）
On April 9th, #林俊杰buy virtual real estate floating loss 91%# appeared on Weibo’s trending searches and sparked heated discussions among netizens.
Metaverse “real estate speculators” lost all their money
With the ebb of virtual real estate, a large number of players with a speculative mentality have also begun to withdraw.
On November 1, 2021, Tianxiaxiu Digital Technology Group launched a virtual social metaverse product – Honnverse Rainbow Universe, which is open to the first batch of users to log in. At that time, when the online limited-edition virtual real estate reservation activity was opened, the server crashed due to the large number of participants.
According to the official news of Tianxiaxiu, the rainbow universe platform will release a total of 350,000 sets of virtual houses. These virtual houses are divided into 13 types of houses according to different landforms. The circulation and scarcity of each type of houses are different. SSS, SS, S, A, B grades, the higher the grade, the rarer it is.
Comparison of the previous prices of SS-class islands around the sea and today (Source: second-hand trading platform)
According to a report by China Securities Journal on April 8, the reporter found on a second-hand trading platform last year that the most expensive set of virtual real estate in the Rainbow Universe “SS Ring Sea Island” was listed at a price of 500,000 yuan, and a total of 15 people “wanted it” “.
At present, in the second-hand trading platform and QQ group, the real estate of Hongyu universe is almost “one price per day”. Compared with the previous virtual real estate that cost hundreds of thousands of yuan, the current price has shrunk to several hundred to tens of yuan. On the second-hand trading platform, there are also buyers who want to bid 1,500 yuan to acquire the highest-level SS-class islands around the sea.
“I have withdrawn from the virtual real estate transaction of Rainbow Universe. Before that, there were more than 100 sets of properties of different grades in the game. Since last year, the virtual real estate has been unsalable. Tens of thousands of yuan have shrunk to a few hundred yuan, and it is difficult to sell.” “House” players told reporters that they did not expect that the popularity of real estate in the Metaverse would drop so quickly.
Metaverse “real estate speculation” is short-lived
According to the Daily Economic News report in September 2022, the popularity of “real estate speculation” in the metaverse seems to be short-lived, especially since the sharp drop since 2022, more entrants have left the market, and more followers have stopped.
Talking about the reasons for the collapse of the virtual real estate in the Metaverse since 2022, some analysts pointed out that “it is mainly the collapse of global encrypted assets, and the virtual assets of the Metaverse are closely connected with the encrypted market.” In fact, in addition to the so-called collapse of encrypted assets, The main factors such as the transfer of hot spots and the departure of hot money, behind the slump of virtual real estate prices reflect that the development of the current metaverse is still in the early stage, commercialization and virtual real estate application scenarios are seriously insufficient, and the game experience based on virtual real estate development is not good enough. good.
The core of Metaverse’s “real estate speculation” lies in the value of the virtual space itself rather than the value of the plot, which is based on the value of the new business model brought about by the industrialization of the Metaverse. It is still necessary to wait for the metaverse technology to develop to a certain level and realize industrialization, so that the virtual real estate can enter a more benign development track.
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 too advanced, and it takes too long to implement.
“The arrival of an era has one thing in common, that is, it will solve many life problems, or the need to improve life or work efficiency. For example, telephones, computers, mobile phones, the Internet, mobile Internet, e-commerce, etc., each era has There are outstanding representatives. Metaverse does have a lot of room for imagination, but what is being hyped now is basically a pseudo-concept.”
Furthermore, from the perspective of the underlying logic, the so-called virtual real estate on the Metaverse platform is essentially an NFT. NFT is a digital asset issued based on blockchain technology. Since its property ownership and transaction flow are recorded and cannot be tampered with, each piece of real estate is “unique”. For example, in Decentraland, the platform has designed a total of 90,000 plots, and no more will be added in the future, so as to ensure the “scarcity” of land.
But this kind of “uniqueness” and “scarcity” is “out of touch” with the actual real economy in some cases. The voice of doubt has never ceased: “In the real world, real estate is valuable because land is a scarce resource. However, this scarcity does not necessarily apply to the Metaverse. Because in these virtual worlds, you can build Unlimited properties.”
According to Hu Jiye, director of the Blockchain Financial Legal Research Center of China University of Political Science and Law, the metaverse is a simulation of the real society, and it cannot exist without reality. “Previously the virtual real estate hype in the Metaverse, which was particularly popular abroad, especially in South Korea, has now plummeted by 90%. One of the important reasons is that the virtual real estate hype is completely divorced from the real economy and reduced to a hype of concepts and expectations. Therefore, the development of the Metaverse must be There must be application scenarios combined with the real economy.”
Daily Economic News Comprehensive China Securities Journal, Everyjing.com (Reporter: Xie Tao)
Cover image source: Data map