Many wonder how big the opportunities will be in the future. Cryptocurrency and blockchain are already changing the potential to what is ahead of us. However, I must state this is a drop in the bucket.
There is one opportunity that is going to increase the wealth generated by a multiple we cannot comprehend. It will be something that, at some point in time, will become an everyday part of our lives. While it will be decades in the making, we will start to see some of it unfolding, perhaps within 10-15 years.
What is this enormous opportunity? It is the virtual business.
Virtual businesses are not to be confused with online businesses. We already have those and they have shown how profitable they are. Instead, virtual businesses exist in a virtual world.
Web 3.0 is going to provide a major paradigm shift for society. This is just the precursor of what is to come. Down the road there will be the "Metaverse" which will completely alter everything about how we operate.
What is the "Metaverse"? Like most of this grand technological ideas, there is no clear definitions. However, think about Fortnight on steroids, and then multiply by 10,000.
The Metaverse is the combination of the digital and physical worlds to the degree that anyone can basically travel to anywhere, simultaneously. It is a place where hundreds of millions of people can enter at the same time and operate.
Our minds want to jump to the idea of it being a game. However, this is a bit amiss since it will not be a game. Virtual immersion is going to take us beyond gaming. It will be life, just on another level. And since we experience things in simulation, we will have few limits to the options provided before us.
Therefore, people are going to be able to construct businesses within these worlds. There will be the need for products and services. Those providing them will be compensated by the users.
Again, this is something that I know is difficult to wrap our heads around. Nevertheless, we are seeing some of the early work being done to move in this direction. At the same time, we do see some opportunities as they are emerging to start playing with this idea.
One of the reasons why I jumped on the bandwagon of @cryptobrewmaster is because I liked the idea of owning a virtual brewery. While this is still in the gaming category, and we are a long way from full virtual immersion (even partial), it is something that I wanted to involved myself in. The potential to embark upon a business of this sort could yield a great deal of profit. It also is an excellent lesson for much that is to come.
To illustrate some of the differences, let us use @splinterlands. That is a digital card game. People acquire the cards and then battles are staged. Winners are rewarded for their victories which helps to grow their holdings. There is also the ability to grow the powers of some of the cards, making them better fighters.
We all know this as a game. Of course, we are also aware that games are business. The NFL, MLB, and NBA are all games that double as big business. Tens of billions a year are generated by this entities. Gaming, itself, is also enormous business exceeding $20 billion in sales in the U.S. alone.
The difference is a virtual business would be if Splinterlands was more like the WWE. Here the battles would take place in the virtual world just like the performers of the WWE do each week in arenas all over the world. Instead of digital cards, the individuals would be avatars of people (or other things from their imagination) that were created). Of course, a lot of this could be developed by AI.
Naturally, payments would have to be conducted which means virtual money. Cryptocurrency could be one of the assets used or it could evolve into something else. Either way, digital payment systems would be set up in one form or another.
It is easy to see as more is digitized, the potential increased significantly. There is a reason why mega-technology companies are the wealthiest in the world and keep growing at a pace faster than everyone else. They are able to leverage the exponential nature of the virtual world.
The same holds true for each of us. As we involve ourselves with projects that move towards virtual businesses, we are going to see the growth of things explode. The metaverse that I am referring to is decades away. However, like all technologies, we will not see a day where it suddenly appears. It will be an evolutionary shift comprising hundreds of millions of projects. Right now, the gaming industry is working hard at providing some of the foundation.
Decentraland is another project where we see this idea starting to take hold. It is already trying to provide people with an onboard to the Metaverse by enabling people to create avatars and engage with others. The key here is that it is owned by the users, an idea that appears to be taking greater hold.
Watching how a lot of this can potentially come together is crucial. None of this is operating in a vacuum.
This is where I also believe the opportunities are.
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