Grayscale Says Metaverse Is a Trillion-Dollar Market Opportunity

The metaverse may represent an over $1 trillion annual revenue market opportunity, crypto investment giant Grayscale said in a report, without specifying the timeline.

The report, which was published on Thursday, is dubbed “The Metaverse, Web 3.0 Virtual Cloud Economies.” The report looks into the opportunity that will arise from the intersection of trends in gaming and lifestyle with blockchain’s potential to provide infrastructure for digital worlds.
Projects like Decentraland allow people to interact, govern and earn tokens, and get real world benefits for their time spent online, Grayscale said. People are spending more and more time online, and they concurrently spend money to build social status within digital realms, the company added.
Grayscale is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group (DCG), which also owns CoinDesk. DCG is also an investor in MANA, the token that powers Decentraland.
Revenue from virtual gaming worlds could grow to $400 billion in 2025, from $180 billion in 2020, Grayscale said. The overwhelming majority of that $400 billion will be in-game spending, compared to spending on premium games, the company noted.
In Q3, total fundraising for crypto was $8.2 billion, $1.8 billion of which went to Web 3 and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Grayscale said. Fundraising for gaming applications overshadowed all other verticals of NFTs in the third quarter, hitting around $1 billion.
“Compared to the $10 billion that companies like Facebook plan to invest, and the amounts that could follow from other companies and venture capitalists, the metaverse is in its early innings,” Grayscale said.
The report was authored by Grayscale Head of Research David Grider and research analyst Matt Maximo. They defined the metaverse as “interconnected, experiential, 3D virtual worlds where people located anywhere can socialize in real-time to form a persistent, user-owned, internet economy spanning the digital and physical worlds.”

UPDATE (Nov. 26, 14:14 UTC): Adds disclosure of Grayscale’s common ownership with CoinDesk, and the parent company’s investment in Decentraland’s MANA token.

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Eliza Gkritsi

Eliza Gkritsi is CoinDesk's crypto mining reporter.

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