Trustees & Metaverse

We are increasingly using the Metaverse to work, play, socialise and learn. Anything we can do in the real world can be done in the metaverse without leaving our home.

I expect Trustees to be deeply involved in the Metaverse in the near future.

Metaverse real estate is a big business. Snoop Dog, PwC, JP Morgan, HSBC, Adidas, Warner Music Group and Samsung have purchased virtual land to develop for different purposes.

There are two main reasons to purchase land in the metaverse. The first reason is that individuals want to use the land for building a place to invite their friends to hang out or to do business, similar to having a web page.

The second reason is that land purchase is perceived as an investment.

As per the World Economic Forum, prices have risen by as much as 500% since Facebook changed the name of its holding company to Meta in October 2021, with people paying millions of dollars to buy land in this virtual world.

such performance shows that buying virtual land is still a high-risk investment. If a seller disappears with your money, the channels for seeking restitution are undeveloped as the market is largely deregulated.

However, the significant amount of investments coming from influential organisations such as Facebook, Microsoft and Nvidia shows that they are expecting Metaverse to be the next generation of the internet.

I am convinced that, in the near future, Trustees with a strong Digital Assets education and a solid internal operations framework will deal with real estate property secured on blockchain.

Trustees will have the responsibility of minimising the risk of anyone being able to steal beneficiaries' virtual real estate or renege on agreements to pay rent and, most importantly, ensure the related estate planning solutions are properly implemented.

If digital real estate becomes a powerful and useful asset building audiences and creating exciting new products and services, the metaverse may be pointing to an exciting future for the DeFi Trustee in the virtual land and real estate market.