JPMorgan, one of America’s largest banks, becomes the first major banking giant to establish itself in the Metaverse by opening a lounge in Decentraland, an Ethereum-based metaverse, created based on blockchain technology.
Alongside unveiling its metaverse lounge going by the name ‘Onyx lounge’ which refers to the bank’s suite of permissioned Ethereum-based services, JPMorgan also released a paper exploring how businesses can find opportunities in the metaverse.
Over the last two years, the mainstream acceptance of new use cases in the cryptocurrency space like non-fungible tokens (NFTs), has advanced global adoption of cryptocurrencies as a household name. These new use cases such as NFTs and the Metaverse and their robust applications to gaming, world-building and entertainment, fueled by integrated commerce applications using blockchain technology, are on track to becoming mainstream.
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What you should know
- Christine Moy, JPMorgan’s head of crypto and metaverse said in an email, “There is a lot of client interest to learn more about the metaverse. We put together our white paper to help clients cut through the noise and highlight what the current reality is, and what needs to be built next in technology, commercial infrastructure, privacy/identity and workforce, in order to maximize the full potential of our lives in the metaverse.”
- In its paper, JPMorgan begins its assessment of “metanomics” by pointing out that the average price of a parcel of virtual land doubled in the second half of 2021, jumping from $6,000 in June to $12,000 by December across the four main Web 3 metaverse sites: Decentraland, The Sandbox, Somnium Space and Cryptovoxels.
- The report further stated, “In time, the virtual real estate market could start seeing services much like in the physical world, including credit, mortgages and rental agreements.” It also added that decentralized finance (DeFi) collateral management could come into play and that rather than traditional finance companies this could be done by using decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).
- The JPMorgan report also attempted to illustrate the metaverse hype versus the reality, stating that many areas need to improve. These include the overall user experience and performance of avatars, as well as commercial infrastructure.
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Although we are seeing institutions add Bitcoin to their treasury, for the metaverse, we are seeing a growing number of institutions choosing to build on Decentraland’s metaverse. In January, electronics giant, Samsung opened a version of its New York store in Decentraland and in November 2021, Barbados established a metaverse embassy in Decentraland.