Prices of metaverse, non-fungible tokens (NFTs), and gaming tokens have shot up in the past few hours, with markets buoyed by the news that Facebook is to rename itself Meta. The tech giant reaffirmed its plans to rebrand itself as a “metaverse company” – and has made references to “crypto” and “NFTs” in its communications on the name change.
Some metaverse-related coins shot up by up to 100%+ in the past 24 hours, with the most meteoric growth coming in the hours after the tech titan’s announcement. At 07:50 UTC, starlink (STARL) is up by 109%, while decentraland (MANA) jumped by 39%, and the sandbox (SAND) increased by 23%.
In the NFT/gaming world, data from Coingecko showed strong growth, with the market-leading Sky Mavis game Axie Infinity shards (AXS) coin up 11% in the past 24 hours. Other gaming-related coins were also up.
As previously reported, the industry was been made aware of a forthcoming name change last week, while founder Mark Zuckerberg has been speaking about a metaverse pivot for several months.
But the name Meta and the language that Zuckerberg and his colleagues have been using to speak of the company’s new direction has led the markets to believe big money is about to flow the metaverse’s way.
In a “founder’s letter,” Zuckerberg wrote that the new pivot would “require not just novel technical work – like supporting crypto and NFT projects in the community – but also new forms of governance.”
At the firm’s annual Connect event, the firm said that it had explored what the “metaverse could feel like over the next decade,” looking at matters including “social connection, entertainment, gaming, fitness, work, education, and commerce.”
It also made spending pledges, in the form of “new tools to help people build for the metaverse.” These include the firm’s Presence Platform, a mixed reality solution for Quest 2, and a “USD 150 million investment in immersive learning to train the next generation of creators.”
The company did not make any overt mention of the role its Diem stablecoin project and the Novi wallet – now in pilot testing – could play in its new direction, instead underlining its commitment to VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality)-related projects.
It labeled its “vision of the metaverse” nothing less than the “successor to the mobile internet,” calling it “a set of interconnected digital spaces that lets you do things you can’t do in the physical world.”
Real-world products, such as the firm’s “first fully-fledged AR glasses,” Meta admitted, were “still a few years out.”
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