Ep 51: Metaverse 101

<p>I’ve got a confession. <em>(Cue Usher’s hit single “</em><em>Confessions</em><em>”) </em></p><p><strong>I am not exactly sure what the metaverse is</strong>. There I said it. I feel so much lighter lol :-)</p><p>Last year, “<strong>metaverse</strong>” burst onto our collective lexicon when Facebook announced it was reinventing itself as Meta. Mark Zuckerberg produced an hour-long video explaining what the metaverse was and how Facebook was going to engage in it. I didn’t watch the video then but I did see a few clips. It felt important. <strong>I felt like it must be a big deal if one of the world’s richest men was betting his ENTIRE fortune on it</strong>. I didn’t want my ignorance to cost me this opportunity.</p><p>So I started a little exploration. I spent part of my New Year’s Eve in the Decentraland metaverse. I started buying a few metaverse tokens and invested in a metaverse-themed ETF. During the hype, I even considered buying some virtual land in the metaverse. Now to be clear, my investments were pretty limited…way less than 1% of my portfolio. </p><p>But since Facebook’s fateful announcement, the world’s most prestigious investment banks and consulting companies have published a slew of reports on the metaverse opportunity. Citi Bank forecast that the metaverse economy could be worth <a target="_blank" href="https://icg.citi.com/icghome/what-we-think/citigps/insights/metaverse-and-money_20220330">$13 trillion by 2030</a>. The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) had a less bombastic view, forecasting that the metaverse economy would be worth $1.3 trillion by 2030. To put things in context, in 2021, the total value of the US car and automobile manufacturing market was $83B. The bottom line is this - some smart folks are saying the metaverse could be at least 12 times the US car market in 7.5 years. No one knows the future but there is some consensus that the <strong>metaverse could be BIG business</strong>. </p><p>Ok…you’ve got me interested. But what is the metaverse??</p><p>I have been digging trying to