Investors Bet Big on Virtual Real Estate

Pioneers of the metaverse are making big investments in digital 'land' on emerging metaverse platforms, but the concept is more dystopian fantasy than sound speculation

Hadrien Gurnel, software engineer EPFL's Laboratory for Experimental Museology (eM+) explores with a virtual reality helmet the most detailed 3D map of the universe with the virtual reality software VIRUP, Virtual Reality Universe Project developed by Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, in St-Sulpice near Lausanne, Switzerland, on Oct. 12, 2021. Laurent Gillieron/Keystone via AP

For risk-prone investors, a new asset has been generating hype and fetching incredible prices: virtual real estate, sold in the form of plots of land and houses in the metaverse.

Much ink has been spilled over the current real estate bull market, but less attention has been devoted to the parallel land rush happening simultaneously as investors divvy up the digital frontier, betting big on virtual land in the metaverse.