Even though the concept of the Metaverse is still in its infancy, the creator of Ethereum thinks that tech giants – like Facebook – would have a hard time laying its groundwork.
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum founder, expressed his opinion on Twitter Sunday, on the future of the nascent sector and his assessment that enterprises seeking to construct the Metaverse are unlikely to be successful.
“The ‘metaverse’ will occur, but I don’t believe any of the current corporate attempts to purposely construct the metaverse will succeed,” Buterin said.
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The 28-year-old Canadian programmer stated this in response to Dean Eigenmann’s assertion that “while the ideas on the metaverse concept make logic, he does not believe it will be realized through Venture Capital funding.”
Eigenmann continued, “I’d rather hang around in World of Warcraft than with the majority of this metaverse crap.”
The Metaverse Concept Remains Vague
The notion and development of Augmented and Virtual Reality technology on the blockchain has dominated the metaverse. However, the concept of metaverse remains ambiguous.
In common parlance, the metaverse is recognized as a network of 3-D virtual worlds where people may interact, do business, and create social ties using avatars, or virtual versions of themselves.
Meta, Facebook’s parent company, renamed in late 2021 as part of a transition to embrace the Metaverse, making it the most famous corporate participant to date to express interest in the Metaverse.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Image: Business Today
Meta Won’t Make It, Ethereum Creator Says
The Ethereum brains Buterin publicly named Meta in his critique of the corporates making a foray into the virtual space.
In response to a tweet, the Ethereum creator argued that Metaverse-focused enterprises would certainly fail because “it’s way too early to determine what people want.”
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The Metaverse: $5 Trillion By 2030
According to new research by McKinsey & Co., the value of the Metaverse might reach $5 trillion by 2030. This demonstrates the predicted impact of the Metaverse on various industries and enterprises over time.
E-commerce is the main economic force creating the Metaverse, according to McKinsey’s preliminary prediction ($2.6 trillion), surpassing areas such as virtual learning ($270 billion), marketing ($206 billion), and gaming ($125 billion).
Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive officer of Meta, described the Metaverse as a “huge opportunity” for a variety of reasons, claiming that developing platforms in the digital sphere will “unlock hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars over time.”
Huge Losses For Meta
On Thursday, the company announced that its Reality Labs segment, which focuses on the Metaverse, suffered quarterly losses of $2.81 billion. Consequently, the division’s year-to-date losses are a staggering $5.78 billion.
Perhaps, what Buterin is saying about Facebook’s attempt at creating a Metaverse – and “misfiring” – has a lot of weight in it.
ETH total market cap at $207.5 billion on the daily chart | Source: TradingView.com Featured image from Finbold, chart from TradingView.com