The world’s most respected investors say there are real opportunities — perhaps trillions of dollars worth of opportunities — in the virtual worlds in the Metaverse.
A growing group of these investors are going on record that they are investing in those opportunities.
Ark Invest- Cathie Wood
Cathie Wood, the founder and CEO of Ark Invest, told CNBC Pro recently that the metaverse could be a multi trillion-dollar opportunity. Wood’s word holds weight because she is considered not just an innovator in financial tools, such as ETFs, but she has been a leader in finding and promoting tech and deep tech investments, such as Tesla and Bitcoin.
Wood added that the Metaverse will push far beyond “gaming and consumer goods,”
“We’re going to have our digital twins, and it’s going to enable a lot of fun and a lot of efficiencies,” Wood said. “It’s a big idea that will probably infiltrate – just like technology is, anyway – every sector in ways that we cannot even imagine right now,” she added.
Jefferies Group
Analysts from the Jefferies Group are saying that the metaverse will cause the biggest disruption to human life ever seen, and investors need to be ready, Jefferies said.
The analysts see a paradox behind that growth: they believe that Metaverse-mania is increasing, yet it’s difficult to know which Metaverse investments to back. However, the establishment of the Metaverse is a matter of when, not if, the Jefferies Group financial experts said. It is an era not unlike the early days of the internet era when the number of companies soared, but there was no clear direction on how the value proposition of the internet would actually evolve.
“A single metaverse could be more than a decade away, but as it evolves, it has the potential to disrupt almost everything in human life,” the analysts, led by equity strategist Simon Powell.
The firm labels the Metaverse, “the biggest disruption to how we live ever seen.”
GM Advisory Group – Frank Balas
GM Advisory Group’s Director of Investment Strategy Frank Balas said in an article for the Wall Street Journal is looking for companies that know how in Metaverse technology.
Those technologies include virtual reality, augmented reality and video. They expect the creation of the Metaverse — which is already growing at a blistering pace — to accelerate even faster. That means investors and investment firms need to be at the right place at the right time.
“As the physical world integrates with the digital world at an accelerated pace, we want to be invested in companies that are best positioned to capitalize from this digital transformation,” Balas said.
Softbank Group
SoftBank Group is a leader in finding cutting edge companies in emerging technologies. The firm is on the hunt in the Metaverse.
Softbank has already invested $150m in a South Korean metaverse platform Naver Z, raising the startup’s valuation to more than $1 billion, several outlets are reporting. The Metaverse site has a large base of young female users.
This investment is just one of the bets Softbank is making on Metaverse technology. The firm also helped Sandbox raise $93 million in a funding to help grow its Metaverse that uses nonfungible tokens, called Sand.
Roundhill Investments – Matthew Ball
Matthew Ball, investor, advisor and Metaverse researcher, said not only is the Metaverse as big as the early internet, it’s as big as the mobile internet.
“We consider the emergence of the Metaverse to be as transformative and valuable as the emergence of mobile Internet and the fixed-line Internet that preceded it. It likely will touch every industry and profession, enlarging and/or disrupting today’s leaders, and leading to countless new companies and technologies,” said Matthew Ball, who leads Ball Metaverse Research Partners, an indexing and research firm.
According to the news release, Roundhill Investments and Ball are positioning themselves to take advantage of this disruption. The registered investment advisor and ETF sponsor focused on developing innovative financial products recently announced the launch of the Roundhill Ball Metaverse ETF (“META ETF”). The META ETF is the first exchange traded product globally to provide investors with exposure to the rapidly-growing market of the Metaverse.
Morgan Stanley – Brian Nowak
Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley estimates that the addressable market for the Metaverse isn’t a trillion dollars, it’s trillions of dollars. In Forbes, Morgan Stanley analysts estimates the Metaverse to be an $8 trillion addressable market. They add that the Metaverse may become the “next generation social media, streaming and gaming platform.”
“Like current digital platforms, we expect the metaverse to initially and primarily operate as an advertising and e-commerce platform for offline products/purchases,” wrote analyst Brian Nowak.
Grayscale Investments
Grayscale Investments estimate that the market opportunity for creating the Metaverse would be worth over $1 trillion in annual revenue. At that size, the analysts say the metaverse — or Web 3.0 — and may compete with Web 2.0 companies worth about $15 trillion today.
The stakes are much higher for a functional Metaverse, they add.
“This vision for the future state of the web has the potential to transform our social interactions, business dealings, and the internet economy at large,” the analysts write.
Yat Siu
Reuters reported recently that digital asset demand will grow in relation to the adoption of online virtual worlds, according to Hong Kong based entrepreneur and angel investor Yat Siu.
“One way to describe the growth of the metaverse is a little bit like the growth of China 30 years ago, in a more limited fashion,” Siu said in a panel on the metaverse at the Reuters Next conference.
He added that investors face some short-term risks and “some bumps in the road.”
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