Metaverse – grift, passing fad, or the future? It’s hard telling… but that won’t stop companies from embracing its early state. Investment bank JPMorgan opened a virtual lounge in blockchain-based Decentraland in an effort to capitalize on the perceived “$1 trillion” market opportunity. In the wake of the news, Decentraland’s native token, $MANA.X, climbed by 4.5% before falling by the end of the day.
The Onyx Lounge is in the Metajuku Mall, a shopping district in Decentraland developed by Republic Realm. Inside the mall, visitors can find roaming tigers and a digital portrait of Jamie Dimon, the crypto-skeptical, Bitcoin-hating CEO of JPMorgan. Users can trek upstairs to watch an executive’s presentation about the economics of cryptocurrency. Some users described their experience on Twitter as “epic.”
JPMorgan’s purpose in entering the meta world is to show that it can operate in the virtual world as a bank, just as it does in the real world. The company liked the idea of working as a bank to assist with loans, payments, and trading in the virtual world since it has its own currency, land, and community. Since there is a rush of content creators using web3 to monetize their content, JPMorgan plans to support them by lending them money or setting up virtual wallets where they can collect money.
To explain more about its plans, the largest bank in the United States published a paper describing how they explore opportunities in the metaverse.
“The Metaverse will likely infiltrate every sector in some way in the coming years, with the market opportunity estimated at over $1 trillion in yearly revenues,” according to the paper.
JPMorgan’s foray into the metaverse by opening its own lounge is just one example of large corporations seeking to leverage the metaverse. It follows mainstream brands including Walmart, Nike, Adidas, and most recently Disney, which has appointed an executive to lead its metaverse push. Disney CEO Bob Chapek believes the meta world is “the next great storytelling frontier.”