JPMorgan is the leading bank in America and is one of the first banking institutions to go into the metaverse. This has been achieved through their latest acquisition of Onyx lounge in Decentraland, an online virtual world that exists on blockchain technology.
JPMorgan enters the metaverse
JPMorgan also published a paper showcasing how businesses can seize opportunities in the metaverse.
Christine Moy, JPMorgan’s head of crypto and the metaverse stated that:
“There is a lot of client interest to learn more about the metaverse. We put together our white paper to help clients cut through the noise and highlight what the current reality is, and what needs to be built next in technology, commercial infrastructure, privacy/identity and workforce, in order to maximize the full potential of our lives in the metaverse.”
The increased acceptance of non-fungible tokens (NFT) has allowed for a rise in the opinion of immersive gaming, entertainment as well as commerce applications
Samsung created a VR version of its New York store in Decentraland this January and Barbados recently opened an embassy on the platform as well.
Onyx lounge is now at Decentraland
JPMorgan has begun assessing “metanomics” by pointing out that the average price of a parcel of virtual land doubled, jumping from $6,000 in June to $12,000 by December across 4 main Web 3 sites: Decentraland, The Sandbox, Somnium Space and Cryptovoxels.
The document notes that:
“In time, the virtual real estate market could start seeing services much like in the physical world, including credit, mortgages and rental agreements. In fact, the financing company may not be a company at all, but instead, a selforganizing, mission-based community of people (who may not have met at all in person), also known as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). The DAO may have seeded its original balance sheet into a multi-signature wallet to create the mortgages.”
The JPMorgan paper, which had several notable recommendations, offers a glimpse of the current state of VR and what areas could use improvement:
“We believe the existing virtual gaming landscape (each virtual world with its own population, GDP, in-game currency and digital assets) has elements that parallel the existing global economy. This is where our long-standing core competencies in cross-border payments, foreign exchange, financial assets creation, trading and safekeeping, in addition to our at-scale consumer foothold, can play a major role in the metaverse.”
