In this episode of Floor Is Rising Podcast, we discuss virtual land and Metaverse Group company with its founder and CEO, Michael Gord.
Who Is Michael Gord?
Michael is a serial entrepreneur focused on the mass adaptation of digital assets and a founder and CEO of the Metaverse Group, a founder of MLG Blockchain consulting, and a co-founder of GDA Capital. He started in crypto back in college by creating a cryptocurrency club at McGill University.
According to his own account, Michael had the good fortune of being at the ETHWaterloo Ethereum (ETH) Blockchain Hackathon and being familiar with non-fungible tokens when crypto kitties came to the market. Back then, he was also convinced that NFTs were going to be a significant part of the blockchain ecosystem. One of his close friends and business partners introduced him to the value proposition of the metaverse and how NFTs would be integrated into the metaverse experience.
This piqued Michael’s interest, and he started buying virtual land of his own when they realized that no one had ever branded the metaverse as a corporate entity. What started afterward was Metaverse Properties, the first-ever company to help people buy and sell metaverse real estate.
Investing In Virtual Land
According to Michael, some investors are more interested in the fungible side of the market, while others take more interest in the NFT and metaverse side of the market. The latter has received a massive amount of mainstream attention after Facebook rebranded to Meta and announced their augmented reality and virtual reality experiences.
What’s more important is that the world’s leading businesses introduced their own collectibles and virtual worlds, at least when it comes to the NFT side of the market. This coincided with Meta’s announcement, and as the result of timing, the bottom-line revenues of these businesses increased by double digits, giving NFTs and the digital worlds credibility.
The investors draw an easy analogy between digital real estate and real-world real estate. For crypto native investors, acquiring virtual real estate is actually adding an asset class that diversifies their crypto wealth. However, traditional investors may consider investing real money worth hundreds, thousands, or even millions of dollars into NFT art as a big jump in a less known direction.
However, acquiring a digital piece of land is akin to purchasing a parcel of land in the physical world, which makes it easier for traditional investors to grasp the concept and become further involved. It’s also worth noticing that traditional businesses that went after Facebook’s rebranding to Meta are a pretty clear indication of where the markets will go, including the real estate market.
Virtual Land Rental Income
Metaverse Group isn’t focused on venture capitalism, but rather on being a Brookfield (Brookfield Properties — a real estate company) for Metaverse land — this includes buying plots of land that can generate cash flow through rentals to buy more land. In addition, the company is focused on publicly opened metaverses, like Decentraland, instead of private, closed Metaverses like Roblox or Facebook.
Decentraland is hosting the annual Metaverse Fashion Week at the end of March, featuring 20 iconic brands. The company is announcing different brands and celebrities walking those brands on a runway in a virtual district that looks like New York’s Fifth Avenue — one of the world’s fashion centers.
One day the metaverse may look like Fifth Avenue in New York, or some other fashion center the other. Metaverse Group seeks to provide the ability for all the different brands to maintain their presence at different events through renting.
Decentraland and The Sandbox
A lot of developer companies are trying to build their own metaverses instead of building on top of those already present in the ether. Decentraland certainly has the advantage of the first move, considering that the platform grew from 15,000 users to 600,000 users last year.
While it’s entirely possible to build another Decentraland, one has to secure everything the original has to offer, as that’s not something that happens overnight. On top of everything, Decentraland is being built by celebrities like Snoop Dogg and massive businesses like JP Morgan and Walmart.
Summary
The metaverse is the next big thing when it comes to investment in digital land. To learn more about Michael Gord’s view on metaverse real estate and what the future holds for the Metaverse Group, check out the entire interview on the Floor Is Rising podcast.
New Episode – @MetaGord comes on show to talk about #metaversegroup efforts to generate yield by renting out virtual land in #Decentraland. What his long term thesis for virtual land is and how institutional investors look at investing in metaverse NFTs.https://t.co/YPlDv04xOY pic.twitter.com/FzWJtryOnu
— Floor is Rising NFT Podcast (@FloorisRising) March 8, 2022
