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Investment in the metaverse will increase tenfold this year: which sectors will it affect?

The pandemic has been the necessary catalyst for many companies to make a decisive commitment to digital transformation in the last two years. Precisely at this time the concept of the metaversewhich materialized last October with the transformation of Facebook in Targetbecoming a topical issue – 4 out of 10 global consumers have heard of the metaverse -, and causing more and more big players bet on it.

As Wildbytes experts affirm, the sectors that are currently betting the most on the metaverse are the entertainment and video games. “The clearest example and with the highest volume of users is clearly the video game Fortnite, although other examples such as Roblox or VRChat follow closely behind. It is a virtual environment in which millions of people play online or simultaneously enjoy experiences such as live concerts, moving billions of dollars a year thanks to the sale of digital assets, such as clothes that allow you to customize your avatar and live only in the virtual world”, declares Julio Obelleiro, CEO of Wildbytes.

Behind them, another of the sectors that is standing out the most is fashion thanks to the garment creation that can only be used in virtual environments. Examples of this have been seen in recent months, such as Balenciagawhich has introduced its products in Fortnite, or Vans, which has created “Vans World” within the Roblox gaming platform. “The world of fashion is undergoing a historic revolution both at the level of the economic impact and the experiences that can be generated and the associated psychology. The value of digital garments that you can only enjoy in virtual environments is already exceeding the value of physical equivalents in many cases”affirms Obelleiro.

Such is the success of virtual garments that the London studio RTFKT, recently acquired by Nike, sold virtual sneakers worth more than 3.5 million euros in a matter of five minutes. Thus, it is not surprising that the most important retailers are creating purely virtual stores, “a situation that will be common in two or three years.”

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Similarly, fashion firms are betting on presenting their new collections in the metaverse, as is the case of H&M, which held an event developed by Wildbytes a few weeks ago to publicize its new collection H&M Innovation Circular Design Story. In it, attendees were able to create their digital double and enjoy an amazing virtual parade with their avatars as protagonists.

Finally, the beauty and automotive sectors stand out, in which there are already brands that are getting ahead and exploring the different possibilities offered by the metaverse. Specifically, 70% of the big brands will have a presence in the metaverse in the next five years.

The boom of cryptocurrencies and NFTs

The metaverse would not be possible without cryptocurrencies and the underlying technology, the blockchain. This technology also makes possible the existence of NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens) or digital assets or unique and non-exchangeable tokens that we may associate with digital products. In this way, only during the next year, the investment by companies in the metaverse will be multiplied by 10, thanks in part to this type of virtual currencies. In fact, the metaverse is estimated to be an $800 billion market by 2024.

Roblox, one of the biggest players related to the metaverse, is on track to generate some 2,000 million dollars in billing in 2021 and it comes almost entirely from the sale of your digital currency, which users can use to purchase virtual goods. Without a doubt, the NFT boom is a reality worldwide”maintains the CEO of Wildbytes.

Alongside NFTs, other technologies used in the metaverse are 3D, virtual reality, augmented reality, blockchain and the aforementioned cryptocurrencies.Web 3.0 has become one of the great objectives of companies, both for accessibility and for allowing the possibility of representing virtual worlds. The goal is to create the feeling of an experience as similar as possible to that of the physical world. That is, to achieve realism in terms of the visual aspect and how you interact with that virtual world”explains Obelleiro.

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