Year of the Universe! New York Times Square enters MANA and DCG

The New Year’s Eve is approaching, and the annual New Year’s Eve events around the world are long-awaited celebrations for many people; but this year there is a difference: the most famous New York Times Square celebration in the United States will also enter the world of meta-universe.

The owner of Times Square, the American real estate company Jamestown announced yesterday (29) that it is cooperating with Digital Currency Group (DCG), a company focused on digital asset investment, to rebuild the famous landmark of Times Square in New York in Decentraland and plan a series of celebration activities.

According to the official website of the event, this event called Meta Fest 2022, users will be able to create personalized avatars and explore Times Square with friends. The party itself will feature exclusive music and entertainment performances, rooftop VIP lounges, CryptoArt galleries, immersive games, and live broadcasts from the real world around the world.

Jamestown General Manager Michael Phillips said: Metaverse is an important part of the development of real estate and built environment. Physical real estate is largely limited to people who are geographically close, and Metaverse allows people from all over the world to enter these places through immersive virtual experiences.

Real world developers enter the meta universe

Jamestown did not disclose how much money the company has invested in virtual real estate, but as the value of virtual real estate continues to soar in popular virtual world games such as Decentraland and The Sandbox, the participation of real-world real estate developers is a trend worthy of attention. .

According to previous reports, Decentraland announced in late November that a piece of virtual land under its control was sold for more than US$2.4 million, making it one of the largest meta-universe land transactions in history.

The US financial media "Business Insider" reported that this transaction has set the highest selling price of virtual real estate, more than twice the previous highest selling price of virtual real estate of US$913,000, which is slightly higher than the average house price in Manhattan, New York. And it is much higher than the average house price in other administrative regions of the United States and San Francisco.

However, the "Reuters" report also questioned that this kind of transaction may be hype, because when Decentraland sold a piece of virtual land at a high price of more than US$913,000 in June this year, buyers said it would use it to build a shopping mall and sell virtual clothing, but a Reuters reporter Later, I visited the place many times, but did not see any consumers.

Crypto investors also move to physical real estate

Interestingly, as virtual real estate is booming, the phenomenon of lucrative crypto investors turning to physical real estate is also happening.

According to previous reports, Ryan Serhant, a gold medal real estate agent in the United States, pointed out in an interview earlier this month that he has observed that more and more cryptocurrency whales want to transfer crypto wealth to real estate and other tangible assets; even predicting that in the next five years, half of the real estate in the United States The transaction will be carried out in encrypted currency, and it is said that NFT will become one of the main forms of signing transaction contracts in the future. He said: We now see (cryptocurrency buyers) much more than in 2020 and the first half of 2021. After people have accumulated wealth, they are thinking of ways to preserve them. The way for these people is to turn them into tangible assets. Just as cash-rich people withdraw funds from banks and invest them in real estate to hedge against inflation, we have seen a similar situation in the crypto community. Customers are looking for diversified funding allocation methods.