A Trillion Market On the Horizon for The Metaverse, Grayscale reports
A new report from digital asset investment firm Grayscale reveals that active Metaverse users have increased over tenfold between early 2020 and June 2021
In the November report titled “The Metaverse, Web 3.0 Virtual Cloud Economies”, Grayscale researchers estimate that there is over $1 trillion up for grabs in the next years in “market opportunity” when the Metaverse turns mainstream.
The bullish report takes the the perspective of open Metaverse worlds with by an “interconnected crypto-economy” such as Decentraland and was completed by Grayscale Head of research David Grider and research analyst Matt Maximo.
The duo notes that a “new online experience” has been created which is rapidly attracting a larger audience. Metaverses integrating crypto tokens and decentralized finance (DeFi) services such as staking and lending or NFTs, will bring in new users which holds massive potential:
“Compared to other Web 3.0 and Web 2.0 segments, Metaverse virtual world users are still in their early innings, but if current growth rates remain on their current trajectory, this emerging segment has the potential to become mainstream in the coming years.”
By considering “global all-time active metaverse wallets” data since the start of 2020, the analysts show that userbase has grown by 10X since that time to around 50,000 as of June 2021.
There are a few key dynamics that could significantly boost the Metaverse sector, the duo states. This includes target audiences increases in average leisure time and money spent on digital hobbies, a cultural shift from premium games to free-to-play gaming and Web 3.0 innovations such as play-to-earn (P2E). The report reads:
“Web 3.0 Metaverse virtual worlds have benefited from rapid innovation and productivity gains. Crypto virtual worlds have created a multi-million dollar primary and secondary market for creators and asset owners by eliminating capital controls and opening their digital borders to free-market capitalism.”
In 2020, global revenue from virtual world gaming was over $180 billion, while “premium spending” accounted for around $40 billion.
The potential for Metaverse platforms is also showing in the surging prices of native tokens for the two most popular projects in the space. Decentraland (MANA) and The Sandbox (SAND) have been doing very well recently, trading at $5.38 and $7.62 at the time of writing for respective gains of 54% and 94% in the last 7 days.
While Facebook are moving full force forward with their Metaverse, Crypto exchange Gemini recently announced to invest a large portion of the recently raised $400 million in the Metaverse.
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Source: igaming
