Emaar x Decentraland
I had a thought (aka mindberry) growing in Dubai about whether the real estate company Emaar could diversify real estate holdings into the metaverse. Below is my rationale. Could this be viable eventually?
UAE Master of Experimental Real Estate
The UAE’s key real estate developer Emaar is known for real estate experimentation.
Mubadala’s Real Estate & Infrastructure fund provides stable returns in order to make riskier venture and emerging market bets, all optimized for the ideal amount of risk and return when the fund is viewed holistically across all holdings.
Adding virtual real estate to Mubadala’s Real Estate & Infrastructure fund could increase the Sharpe Ratio by contributing an uncorrelated asset with different growth + decline factors than physical land holdings in the region, unaffected by climate change, and with different value drivers.
However,yYou need one with enough inventory to make a significant capital placement without moving the market in a Hawthorne Effect manner. There are several virtual land markets, and if one grows large enough, perhaps it could be a legitimate opportunity.
- Decentraland
- Decentraland held its first LAND auction at the Terraform Event in December 2017. A parcel of land cost a mere $20 at the time. Those parcels sold for an average of over $6,000 in 2021. By the start of 2022, the same land token went for $15,000.
2. Sandbox
- 60% of market share in VR real estate, a new asset class with 32% forecasted growth btw 2022 and 2028.
- Legendary video game publisher Atari splurged on a $4.3m purchase of land in The Sandbox — where visitors can play Atari-themed games and attend branded events
- Adidas bought land in Sandbox where consumers can interact with products and convert to real world items
