The billionaire owner of the Dallas Mavericks and ardent cryptocurrency supporter Mark Cuban is not captivated by the metaverse.
“The worst part is that people are buying real estate in these places. That’s just the dumbest shit ever,” he told the YouTube channel Altcoin Daily.
The timing of Cuban’s remarks coincides with a perceived cooling of the enthusiasm around the metaverse, a word used to describe a newly emerging virtual environment where people may hang out, play, and shop.
When Facebook changed its name to Meta in November, there was a frenzy of excitement about the metaverse’s potential, which sparked a land rush for digital plots in so-called metaverse platforms developed by companies like the Sandbox and Decentraland.
These platforms let investors purchase land in the form of an NFT, which can then be built with virtual structures or experiences or traded on secondary markets like NFT exchange OpenSea. Atari, Samsung, Adidas, Warner Music Group, and other businesses have all purchased digital land.