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Traditionally, the means to building wealth have been well charted. Most entrepreneurs grew up on investment manuals written by the likes of Warren Buffet, Robert Kiyosaki, Charlie Munger and Benjamin Graham. I sure did.
A lot of this information, especially in relation to investment psychology, is timeless and still relevant, but the technical details are not. Moreover, the environment — including the time and place in which the books were written — simply no longer exists.
We are currently entering the era of Web 3.0: a world built on distributed ledgers, virtual reality, metaverses, cryptocurrencies, non-fungible tokens, artificial intelligence and the internet of things.
Here are ways to position yourself to make sustainable wealth in this brave new metaverse.
1. Virtual real estate
Real estate has always been the hallmark of long-term wealth for the elites. The reasons are obvious: You might make a lot of money through NFTs and cryptocurrencies one day, and lose everything the next. But with real estate, the tendency is to consistently earn profits year on year. Its hallmark is stability: Even if it has a few bad years, the trend is to balance out over the long term.
Virtual real estate does not refer to setting up online publications and websites (some digital marketers refer to this as online real estate, a valid but entirely different concept). What is being referred to here is real estate in a metaverse. This area will typically be called “space,” as opposed to “property.”
What’s surprising is that you can actually take some traditional concepts and slap them into the metaverse, like advertising, rent prices, lounges, retail shops, museums and more. Specific spaces will be specifically adapted for a given VR experience, but without electricity, building or maintenance costs.
This might all sound quite futuristic, but it’s already happening. Metamall, for example, is offering casinos, lounges, arcades, shopping centers and pretty much everything else you would expect in a shopping mall. There are about 6,000 available spaces divided into Cubes, Cabins, Clubs, Chalets and Chateaus. You can purchase a Cube (in the form of an NFT), which represents a standard fashion or retail store. Then there’s the option of a Chateau, which can be likened to a multi-story office complex or a large government building.
While we’re likely a few years away from commercially available VR headsets and a working metaverse, the point is that the companies and architectures are here right now, and entrepreneurs who capitalize on trends before they go mainstream (typically while they are being ridiculed by the crowd) are the ones that make enormous profits.
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