Mark Cuban says buying virtual real estate is 'the dumbest s--- ever' as metaverse hype appears to be fading
Katie Canales - Business Insider
Billionaire investor Mark Cuban is out on digital land purchases.
The "Shark Tank" star spoke to the crypto YouTube channel Altcoin Daily on Sunday about a range of topics, including the feasibility — or lack thereof — of buying virtual property in the metaverse.
"The worst part is that people are buying real estate in these places," Cuban said, as Fortune first noted. "That's just the dumbest shit ever."
Companies like Sandbox — where rapper Snoop Dogg's own metaverse lives — and Decentraland sell digital plots of land to users who can then buy, sell, or lease the space, or use it to build virtual structures.
What gives metaverse land value, in theory, is the same two principles of physical real estate: scarcity and location. However, experts told Insider in January that doesn't apply to the metaverse because you can't artificially introduce scarcity.
That's an idea that Cuban shares, too.
"It's not even as good as a URL or an ENS, because there's unlimited volumes that you can create," Cuban told Altcoin Daily, referring to Ethereum naming service domains that serve as readable crypto wallet addresses, which have become a lucrative market.
Instead, virtual land is more of a viable investment for brands like Adidas and Nike looking to build social experiences, Janine Yorio, the CEO of metaverse real estate company Republic Realm, told Insider in January. And it's still more of a risky crypto asset than it is anything similar to investing in physical real estate.
The metaverse crashed into the limelight late last year when Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced he was creating a parent company called Meta for his pinwheel of projects like Instagram and WhatsApp, a move designed to reflect the tech giant's contributions to building out the futuristic technology.
In theory, the metaverse will be a sweeping digital world where people can interact via digital avatars, while tethered to the real world with AR glasses and VR headsets. But despite the year-long hype, it's nowhere close to materializing, and it's seen a dip in interest and sales since November 2021 along with the rest of the crypto world.
"Right now it's more talk than anything," Cuban told Altcoin Daily.
Cuban may not be a fan of metaverse land, but he's still a vocal supporter of crypto and other Web3 technologies — he has invested in Yuga Labs, which owns the popular Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT collection, and in late May compared crypto to the early internet, noting that the best projects will survive the ongoing crypto winter.
"People dismissed the net just like they are crypto," Cuban tweeted.
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Originally Posted by Godfather
