Mark van Rijmenam - Step into the Metaverse

In Chapter 7, we will cover the economics of the metaverse, including nonfungible tokens. Already in 2021, there were multiple million-dollar digital real estate deals and exchange of digital assets, and that is just the beginning. With an infinite supply of digital land across various metaverse spaces, you would expect low prices, but that is not what is happening. Prices are at an all-time high, and the more the metaverse is in the news, the more this will probably continue. However, there is a caveat: this early gold rush will most likely, and should not, continue if we want to ensure the metaverse is inclusive and reduces inequality instead of enlarging it. How does digital real estate work, how does it impact the metaverse economy, and is it a good thing? What other aspects of the metaverse define how the economy will work? To understand how the economy of the metaverse will work, we will take a deep dive into NFTs: what they are, how they work, why they are so important, what the challenges are of NFTs, and why the current hype of selling JPEGs for millions of dollars is important, though not where NFTs’ true value lies.

Finally, before finishing the book with a look into the future of the metaverse in Chapter 9, we will explore the dark side of the metaverse. Similar that the existing Web has a Dark Web, the metaverse will inherently come with negative aspects that harm citizens, organizations, and societies. What are these problems, and more importantly, how can we prevent them from happening? We will discuss the dangers and ethical challenges of the metaverse, the most likely (mental) health impact on its users and the numerous privacy and security dangers. The metaverse will be fun and useful, but only if we build it right. Chapter 8will discuss how to go about this and how we can fight back to keep the metaverse a pleasant environment that does not further destabilize society but drives humanity forward.

Our society and what it means to be human will change drastically in the coming years. We are at the cusp of building an alternate reality that is not bound by the laws of physics and where anything is possible. In this world, magic will become a reality. I hope that this book will give you a complete understanding of what the metaverse can become, how you as a consumer can enjoy it, and how organizations can benefit from it, without harassing and following those same consumers as organizations do on the Web today. If we get it wrong and don’t learn from our mistakes, the dystopian metaverse portrayed by Neal Stephenson in his novel Snow Crash will become a reality. However, if we build it right, a world of abundance is upon us. Let the journey and magic begin; let’s step into the metaverse.

1 *We will discuss nonfungible tokens in-depth, but to give you a head start, nonfungible means that these tokens, which are (digital) representations of (digital) assets similar to how casino chips represent money, are nontradeable. This then means that one nonfungible token cannot be exchanged for another nonfungible token because they do not hold the same value. Casino chips or dollar bills are fungible; a one-dollar chip or one-dollar bill can be exchanged for another one-dollar chip or one-dollar bill, and you still have exactly the same thing. A Pokémon Go card is nonfungible, because one card can be more valuable than another and exchanging it means you will have something different with a different value.

2 †For those unfamiliar with Fortnite, it is an online video game developed by Epic Games and released in 2017. It is a so-called Battle Royale Game, where players fight each other to become the last player standing. It offers different game modes that enable users to not only fight each other but also watch concerts, build an island, or socialize.

3 *In this book, the term Big Tech refers to Facebook (Meta), Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet, as well as the Chinese counterparts Alibaba, Baidu, and Tencent.

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