A few years ago, investing in virtual real estate sounded absurd. Today, the story is very different. Now you can buy virtual land slots in digital worlds like Decentraland (MANA), and with the metaverse on the horizon, investors are piling up.
Read on to learn more about the metaverse and how you can invest in virtual real estate to get into the potential land grab of the metaverse early.
What is the metaverse?
The metaverse is now often explained as an alternative digital reality that combines virtual reality, augmented reality, and extended reality where humans will be able to work, play, and live digitally.
The metaverse is a term and concept that has existed for more than three decades, but was not until recently, after Facebook announced their plans to become a metaverse company, that the metaverse idea soared in popularity.
As a result, more and more investors are exploring investment opportunities in this rapidly growing new space. Buying virtual land in the main digital worlds is one of these opportunities.
So let’s dig deeper and explore what virtual earth is and why investors are jumping into it.
What is virtual land and why do investors buy it?
Real estate is one of the most popular asset classes in the world and now exists in the digital realm as well.
Virtual Earth is intangible land that exists in virtual worlds. Like physical land, it is also sold as parcels and can be purchased with the currency of the specific land. Today, there are several virtual worlds that allow you to buy virtual real estate. Decentraland is possibly the most popular of them.
The virtual earth in the budding metaverse has been sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
In June of this year, land was sold for more than USD 900,000 in Decentraland. And that is only an example. In light of the growing interest in the metaverse, the potential ROI (return on investment) in virtual earth looks promising to savvy crypto speculators. (Learn more: Tokens.com buys $ 2.8 million worth of virtual land in the upcoming fashion district)
Second, investors can put their virtual land to use and earn income from it: If you own a virtual land, you can organize exclusive events or parties and charge those who want to attend.
For example, American rapper Snoop Dogg hosted an exclusive party at The sandboxThe non-fungible token platform (NFT) to rebuild your real life mansion. Attendees needed to have an NFT, which acted as a pass and gave them access to the event.
Third, investors can generate regular income from their virtual lands.. For example, you could build a virtual house using NFT on your virtual lot and rent it for a monthly income. Or set up an NFT art gallery and rent the space to emerging crypto artists to display their work in the metaverse.
How to buy LAND on Decentraland: a step-by-step guide
Decentraland is a blockchain-based virtual reality platform that allows users to buy land, play games, host events, and interact with each other in multiple ways.
It is the largest virtual universe in the NFT space that has its own tokens: MANA and LAND. Each piece of LAND in Decentraland measures 16 meters by 16 meters and is represented as an NFT. The number of lots in Decentraland is capped at 90,000, which helps create a shortage. Anyone can buy, rent or sell land in Decentraland through Open sea – an NFT marketplace – or through the official Decentraland marketplace.
Now that you know what Decentraland is, here is a step-by-step guide on how to buy land in Decentraland directly from your Marketplace.
Step 1: Go to Decentraland Marketplace
To get started, you’ll need to visit the Decentraland Marketplace and log in or register if you haven’t already.
Once you have logged in, search for “Plots and farms”. Then click on ‘See all’.
Step 2: select a plot of LAND
The next step is to browse through the available terrains and select your preferred choice of terrain. The advantage of buying land in Decentraland directly from the market is that you can see the neighboring areas and the proximity to famous areas.
Once you’ve selected your virtual terrain, proceed to click on it to read about it in detail. Here you will see the price of the land in MANA, the availability and the name of the owner.
Touch “Buy” to make the purchase.
Step 3: connect your wallet to Decentraland Marketplace
To make the purchase, you will need to make sure that your wallet is connected to your account, as the ground will be sent to your wallet as an NFT once the purchase is successful and complete.
If you don’t have a wallet, you can download wallets like MetaMask and Trust Wallet. Remember, your preferred wallet must have enough MANA or ethereum (ETH) for you to make the purchase.
Also, you need to have some extra tokens to take care of the fuel fee.
Step 4: Confirm your virtual EARTH
Once the purchase is complete, you can confirm your EARTH in your wallet.
If you are using Trust Wallet, you can confirm the same in ‘Collectibles’ and in the ‘NFTs’ tab in the MetaMask wallet.
Should you buy virtual real estate in the metaverse?
So far, the virtual real estate market has only known one direction, and that is the rise. Fueled by Facebook’s push towards the metaverse and Web 3.0-centric investor interest in all things metaverse, virtual real estate could become a very lucrative asset class, especially for early adopters.
However, as with any investment you make, you shouldn’t invest more than you can afford to lose.
While it cannot be denied that the virtual real estate market has grown substantially, it is a relatively new market and investors should do their due diligence and proper research before investing.
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Learn more:
– Metaverse Spurs USD 100M in weekly NFT land sales
– Invest in the metaverse: 4 ways to invest in the virtual future
– Metaverse is a ‘massive and massive opportunity’ for Crypto – BofA Strategist
– We know better than to allow Facebook to control the metaverse
– TechCrunch founder to sell his Kyiv flat bought for cryptocurrencies – as an NFT
– Spain’s first tokenized property is sold for ETH to investors in 3 countries