Mark Cuban, the Billionaire investor, has talked about digital land purchases. The "Shark Tank" star spoke to the crypto YouTube channel Altcoin Daily on Sunday about a range of topics, including the feasibility, or lack thereof, of buying virtual property in the metaverse.
Cuban said:
"The worst part is that people are buying real estate in these places. That's just the dumbest shit ever."
It has been reported that companies like Sandbox — where rapper Snoop Dogg's own metaverse lives — and Decentraland sell digital plots of land to users who can then buy, sell, or lease the space, or use it to build virtual structures. What gives metaverse land value, in theory, is the same two principles of physical real estate: scarcity and location.
However, in January, experts said that doesn't apply to the metaverse because you can't artificially introduce scarcity. That's an idea that Cuban shares, too.
Referring to Ethereum naming service domains that serve as readable crypto wallet addresses, which have become a lucrative market, Cuban said:
"It's not even as good as a URL or an ENS, because there's unlimited volumes that you can create."
The report said that Janine Yorio, the CEO of metaverse real estate company Republic Realm, said in January that virtual land is more of a viable investment for brands like Adidas and Nike looking to build social experiences. And it's still more of a risky crypto asset than it is anything similar to investing in physical real estate.
Likewise, the metaverse crashed into the limelight late last year when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced he was creating a parent company called Meta for his pinwheel of projects like Instagram and WhatsApp, a move designed to reflect the tech giant's contributions to building out the futuristic technology.
In theory, the metaverse will be a sweeping digital world where people can interact via digital avatars, while tethered to the real world with AR glasses and VR headsets. But despite the year-long hype, it's nowhere close to materializing, and it's seen a dip in interest and sales since November 2021 along with the rest of the crypto world.
Cuban may not be a fan of metaverse land, but he's still a vocal supporter of crypto and other Web3 technologies — he has invested in Yuga Labs, which owns the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, and in late May compared crypto to the early internet, noting that the best projects will survive the ongoing crypto winter.
Thus, he said:
"People dismissed the net just like they are crypto."
Source: Business Insider