At a recent all-star round table,
2022 will be the year of ‘baby steps’ for the metaverse
The metaverse remains one of the biggest tech trends, though the round table participants expressed very different views over its meaning and short-term prospects. For O.J. Jordan, it’s an interactive virtual reality experience, and blockchain technology is what VR needs to finally take off. He predicted that the metaverse market could reach $800 billion by 2024, up over 10x from today’s $70bn.
But for Mary Carracho, the metaverse space needs more time to figure itself out. While it will be very interesting to watch NFTs move across virtual spaces, many other technologies (besides blockchain) make up the metaverse. Evolving regulations will have an effect, too. Because of this complex interplay, 2022 will be mostly about ‘baby steps’ interspersed with ‘aha!’ moments as more brands realize that it’s worth entering this industry.
To this, Hans Koning added that for many people, the best way to participate in the trend could be just owning assets, such as virtual land, without being personally active in the metaverse. He named Decentraland and OpenSea as projects with great potential, as well as MetaBrands, with which he works as an advisor.
The GameFi audience to be split
Moving on to GameFi – a narrative closely related to the metaverse – Alexandra Demidova said that she’s getting an enormous number of marketing requests from crypto gaming projects, but they all look the same. With several strong games already in the market, it’s unrealistic to expect a new Axie Infinity to emerge in the coming months.
Looking into the future of GameFi, Mary Carracho expects a clear separation of the two audiences: those who play to make money and those who enjoy the games for their own sake, and for whom the financial aspect could actually be a disincentive. This separation will be fascinating to watch as Web 3.0 becomes a reality and gives rise to big distributed games.
According to Paul Moukhine, big game development studios still haven’t grasped the essence of GameFi as gamified DeFi. If studios realize that it’s all about the economy, their entry can make big waves in the space.
Are music NFTs the next big thing?
Sergei Simanovsky brought up an interesting point: nobody, even industry veterans like himself, could have expected that NFTs would be the thing to drive blockchain adoption – and yet, that’s what happened.
O.J. Jordan called the historical $69-million sale of Beeple’s collage at Christie’s an event that ‘shook the world’ – and predicted that music would be the next NFT frontier. Non-fungible tokens offer the direct ownership and royalty opportunities that artists have always needed. With NFTs, musicians can finally take back control over their earnings.
At the same time, the experts noted that the NFT market is still in the speculative bubble stage - similar to the ICO hype of 2017-18 when many people ended by selling at a loss. A similar thing could happen with NFTs, though this doesn’t negate their transformative role.
Web 3.0 and regulation
Many think that a new, distributed web will replace the centralized internet we’re used to. But Mary Carracho stressed that until decentralized technology becomes as easy to use as centralized services, it will remain no more than a ‘playground’ for people who understand how to make money off it.
Web 3.0 is all about privacy and the desire to own one’s data that stems from a deep-rooted mistrust in society. The desire for a self-sovereign identity will be the key issue in 2022, though the transition to a true Web 3.0 will be drawn-out because of the natural inertia of people and businesses.
The evolution of blockchain regulation will be paramount for Web 3.0 – but here, the experts don’t expect any drastic moves in 2022. Regulatory ambiguity is likely to continue, with ‘semantic’ battles over the definition of utility tokens, for example. Interestingly, Hans Koning believes that the US regulators’ indecisive position creates a real risk that the States will miss out on the enormous opportunity and be leapfrogged by other, more crypto-friendly countries.
We have to be ready for tighter restrictions across the board, though. Regulators dislike cryptocurrencies because of their excess volatility – but they also dislike stablecoins. Up to 80 countries are now looking into CBDCs (central bank digital currencies), and China is already rolling out the ‘digital yuan.’ Countries that launch CBDCs could move to ban or restrict crypto.
Finally, the participants gave their Bitcoin predictions. O.J. Jordan said that $120k could be the peak for this cycle and that it can come in 2022. Nikolai Shkilev, too, hopes to see BTC at $100k. Ultimately, as Hans Kerner pointed out, there will always be someone calling for $20k and someone expecting $1 million, and the truth will almost certainly be somewhere in between. Perhaps it’s better not to focus so much on the price of Bitcoin but rather on the fascinating trends that are evolving in front of our very eyes.
The full 2-hour round table stream is available on BDC Consulting’s