Banking firm Citi delved into the virtual world in a March report titled "Metaverse and Money."
The banking giant has predicted a very bullish future for “Metaverse”, after a large number of prominent companies have indicated their intentions to enter the digital worlds via the Internet in one way or another.
City anticipates that the next evolution of the Internet (Web 3.0) and “Metaverse” will evolve beyond games and will include commerce, art, media, advertising, healthcare and social collaboration.
She said such a large ecosystem could be a multibillion dollar market, adding:
The total addressable market for metaverses could be between $8 trillion and $13 trillion by 2030, with total metaverse users around five billion.
Investing in “Metaverse”:
To reach such a high market value, City added, a lot of infrastructure development will be required.
The report stated that streaming content in Metaverse would likely require a thousand-fold increase in computational efficiency.
To achieve this, significant investments will be required in computing, storage, network infrastructure, consumer hardware, and game development platforms.
In its report, Citi also told that cryptocurrencies will play a large role in metaverse, adding that they will need to coexist with current forms of money, and also quoted in its report the following:
Various forms of cryptocurrencies are expected to dominate, but given the multi-network trend in the crypto ecosystem, it is likely that cryptocurrencies will coexist with fiat currencies, CBDCs, and stablecoins.
For this to happen, the cryptocurrency industry and any major metaverse ecosystems will need to be regulated, and digital property rights must be addressed.
The company also hinted that there are likely to be two forms of “metavirus”:
A closed version similar to Web 2.0, which is what companies like Meta (formerly Facebook) aim to create.
The open, decentralized, community-governed Metaverse that will be the Web 2.0 version.
In mid-March, HSBC partnered with The Sandbox to purchase a virtual land for esports and gaming development.
