According to Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, the metaverse economy could reach $ 3 trillion between now and 2032. Clegg cites a white paper written by the independent consulting firm Analysis Group, but the numbers vary widely. The metaverse is already worth $ 22 billion today according to analyst firm Market Research Future. A decidedly low figure for Emergen Research’s competitors, according to which it must be raised to at least 63 billion and that in 2030 it will even reach 1,600 billion dollars, thus growing almost thirty times. And what about Bloomberg Professional Services, according to which the metaverse in 2020 generated a turnover of 500 billion, which, however, will face a modest growth between now and 2024 reaching no more than 800 billion?
Virtual reality
First school in the Metaverse
23 March 2022
Why such a colossal difference between all these figures? And how did the metaverse generate such an important economic value two years ago, when this term was not used by anyone? If your head is spinning, you are not alone: the chaos of the numbers linked to the present or anticipated economic opportunities of the metaverse is impressive and is probably linked to a simple fact, namely that you are trying to estimate something that does not yet exist today.
Right
What law in the Metaverse? A seminar
by Vincenzo Tiani
08 April 2022
In fact, what is the metaverse? Since Mark Zuckerberg presented his vision in October last year, the metaverse is considered a digital, open and immersive world – often but not necessarily in virtual reality – within which we will transfer a growing part of our daily life: working, socializing, playing sports, playing and participating in events within this environment. Beyond the skepticisms about the possibility that something like this could really be successful, at the moment the metaverse is just an embryonic idea that encompasses a myriad of different digital experiences that often have very little in common with each other.
What jobs will serve in the Metaverse
by Massimo Canducci
April 19, 2022
Digital worlds based on cryptocurrency speculation like Decentraland and The Sandbox should probably be included in the metaverse, but what should we say instead of video games with a strong social imprint like Fortnite or Animal Crossing? And the trading of NFT or blockchain-based role-playing games? And if today our digital life still spends mainly on classic social networks (which are also integrating some collectibles certified through NFT, often used as profile images), shouldn’t we also consider Instagram and Twitter as part of the metaverse?
That there is a tendency to put a bit of everything under the metaverse hat, with the result of having irreconcilable estimates, it can also be understood by observing the aforementioned report produced by Bloomberg. Here, the entire economic value generated by the world of video games – which well exceeds 200 billion dollars – is considered an integral part of “metanomics” (the economics of the metaverse).
Does it make sense to also consider the sales of Playstation 5 among the revenues linked to the metaverse? Maybe yes, given that Sony’s console still represents a gateway to an increasingly social and immersive digital world. It is more difficult to accept that live events are also included in the calculation that leads Bloomberg to estimate a total value of 800 billion dollars by 2024: something in which by definition we participate in the physical world. Yet these events – which also include concerts, cinema and sporting events – are considered by Bloomberg as something “that can become part of the concept of the metaverse”. The idea that in the future a growing part of this will be experienced within a digital world cannot be excluded, but that it can already be inserted today in its entirety within the economic value generated by the metaverse really seems a stretch.
A similar problem is also found in a recent report by JP Morgan, which, focusing strongly on the aspects of the metaverse related to cryptocurrencies, has decided not only to include the NFT and the speculative world of Decentraland (which according to many is a bubble ready to explode and almost devoid of real users), but even DeFi. The latter is blockchain-based decentralized finance, through which it is possible, to give just one example, to obtain loans in cryptocurrencies or perform particular types of investments: what does all this have to do with the idea of a virtual and immersive world that have we made the metaverse?
The risk is that – often also due to the confusion between the concept of web3 and that of metaverse – all the latest innovations based on gaming, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, virtual reality, NFT and so on and so forth will be included in the inside these reports, inevitably generating numbers that are as different from each other as they are not very reliable. Probably, in order to estimate today’s value and make more accurate predictions, one thing is necessary first of all: to agree on what exactly the metaverse is.