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MAJOR RETAILERS GETTING READY TO SET UP SHOP IN THE METAVERSE
Abercrombie & Fitch, Nike, Ralph Lauren, Urban Outfitters, and Walmart are among the retailers who have filed trademark applications in recent weeks that detail their plans to set up shop in the metaverse, the virtual world where people’s digital identities can work, attend concerts and other events, and, most importantly, shop.
Walmart has indicated plans to issue its own cryptocurrency and NFT collectibles.
In the metaverse, it also plans to sell virtual merchandise including electronics, home décor, athletic equipment, toys, and personal care products, according to the company’s seven trademark applications filed 30 December.
“They’re super intense,” trademark attorney Josh Gerben said to CNBC.
“There’s a lot of language in these which shows that there’s a lot of planning going on behind the scenes about how they’re going to address cryptocurrency, how they’re going to address the metaverse,” he added.
Nike’s trademark applications show a plan to sell virtual sport shoes and clothing. It also has partnered with metaverse platform Roblox to create a virtual realm called Nikeland.
Last month, Nike bought the virtual sneaker company RTFKT. The price was not disclosed.
Gap has begun selling digital replicas of its logo sweatshirts for as much as $415. Bonus: the purchase includes a real hoodie.
Already, Adidas and Under Armour have sold out their initial slate of NFTs, which now fetch jaw-dropping prices on the trading platform OpenSea.
“All of a sudden, everyone is like, ‘This is becoming super real and we need to make sure our IP is protected in the space,’” said Gerben.
Many retailers came late to e-commerce and now fear missing opportunities in the metaverse, director Frank Chaparro at crypto data service The Block, said to CNBC.
“It’s a win-win for any company in retail,” Chaparro said, “and even if it just turns out to be a fad, there’s not a lot of reputation damage in trying something weird.”
TREND FORECAST: The metaverse is the ultimate video game and, like Minecraft or Grand Theft Auto, will lure a massive number of people to spend hundreds or thousands of hours, and real money, inhabiting a make-believe world, ignoring their real-life relationships and opportunities for a fantasy that disappears the moment they turn away from the screen.
As we have noted, the metaverse and many of the old dot-com ventures have something in common: each is, or was, driven by speculative fever. The dot-com bubble eventually turned into the dot-com bust.
There are dangers of a similar boom and bust for metaverse ventures.
There’s hype. But there has also been real disruption happening, with products and ecosystems exploding in 2021. The gaming sector has been especially affected.
Axie Infinity and other games have demonstrated a different profit model, which rewards players, and allows for decentralized profit sharing for investors as well. The whole industry has taken note (see “METAVERSE GAMING HITS BILLION DOLLAR PAYDIRT WITH AXIE INFINITY,” 5 Oct 2021).
The Metaverse industry had a market cap of $48 billion in 2020. Some, like Emergen Research, predict that it will grow to close to a trillion by the end of the decade.
Grayscale, as reported by Yahoo News, was even more bullish in a recent report, predicting that economic opportunities present in the metaverse could top $1trillion within the next few years.
The report, titled ‘The Metaverse, Web 3.0 Virtual Cloud Economies’, said metaverse platforms that have integrated crypto tokens, NFTs, decentralized finance and more have “created a new online experience”.
Eventually, the metaverse will evolve into a stable, complex, alternative reality that will be harder to disrupt. There will be winners and losers. For now, it remains to be seen which worlds survive and the metaverse remains a frontier with no guarantees.
META READYING NFT COLLECTIBLES MARKET
Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, is taking three steps deeper into the metaverse.
It’s tweaking its software to enable Facebook users to display their NFT collectible tokens, such as CryptoPunks and Bored Ape Yacht Club, on their Facebook pages.
In addition, the company is developing a service that will help users create their own collectible tokens, several people familiar told the Financial Times.
Also, Meta is preparing to create a market site where people can buy and sell their collectible pixels, two insiders disclosed to the FT.
Meta subsidiary Instagram is testing a feature allowing users to display NFTs, according to unnamed sources cited by the FT.
Crypto exchange Coinbase is opening an NFT trading post, Twitter is readying its pages to display NFTs, and Reddit has unveiled its own line of NFT avatars.
Meta is late to enter the surging market for digital objets d’art, which has swelled to $40 billion, the FT reported.
OpenSea, the chief trading platform for NFTs, raised $300 million earlier this month to reach a valuation of $13 billion; six months ago, it raised $100 million and was valued at $1.5 billion.
TREND FORECAST: This is the New ABnormal. Just as the Industrial Revolution sapped the creative uniqueness of individuals with mass production, the metaverse world will further sap the human spirit from the already hi-tech addicted global population.
Upcoming generations will get degrees, honors and salutations along the way, and become motivated to become more “Meta” and less human.