From the Bank for International Settlements, February 2024:
BIS Papers
No 144
The economic implications of
services in the metaverse
Abstract
How could an immersive computer-generated environment (“the metaverse”) impact services in the digital economy? Investment in virtual worlds has grown rapidly. Yet the technology still falls short of achieving fully immersive experiences. And despite hyperbolic predictions, various indicators show interest has fallen in the last two years. While some use cases show promise (eg gaming, education, healthcare), others seem distinctly gimmicky (eg virtual bank branches, land speculation). If the metaverse does succeed, it could mean: (i) a blurring of lines between the tradable and non-tradable sectors, (ii) greater cross-border economic integration and (iii) new demands on payment services. In principle, retail fast payment systems, retail central bank digital currencies or tokenised deposits could be designed to support services in the metaverse. To prevent virtual environments and money from becoming fragmented and dominated by powerful private firms, public policy would need to support efficient, interoperable payments and provide clear standards on data privacy, digital ownership and consumer protection.
In the 31 page PDF there are 75 instances of the word "payment." There are 57 uses of the root word "token" and/or tokens and/or tokenization. They are very serious about this stuff.
Here's #12 on page 5:
Payments and tokenisation allow for the exchange of value and thus a virtual economy in the metaverse; identity solutions serve as authentication and validation mechanisms; and security, governance and privacy protocols provide the legal frameworks and regulatory structure that allow the metaverse to exist (CB Insights (2022)).
And beginning on page 14:
4. Payments in the metaverse
For metaverse applications to be commercially viable and to promote economic
activity, payments are a crucial foundation. Existing metaverse applications already handle a wide variety of payment methods to purchase items directly or to transact in native utility or governance tokens (Graph 8.A). According to a survey of 10,000 metaverse users, commissioned by PayPal and fielded by Logica Research (Lau (2023)), users do not uniquely choose one payment method but pay in a wide variety of ways. The most commonly used means of payment in the existing metaverse is – perhaps predictably, given the study’s sponsor – PayPal (over 80% of respondents). This is followed closely by debit cards (78%). Other traditional forms of payment are all commonly used according to the survey – credit cards (66%), direct bank transfers
(50%) and prepaid cards (46%). These payment services can be used to buy metaverse tokens, or digital representations of value, in Roblox, Minecraft and Second Life. Those tokens, in turn, can be traded for tokenised goods and services (eg virtual objects and clothes for avatars, services provided by other users). As virtual worlds grow, consumers may want to use their typical payment method out of convenience, which makes it important for these platforms to accept them. The survey’s definition of the metaverse is broad and includes some videogames, but if we focus exclusively on blockchain-based metaverse applications, the top method of payment would be stablecoins and other cryptocurrencies. This includes Bitcoin and Ethereum, and utility and governance tokens in these platforms. The Sandbox’s native token, SAND, can be
traded on exchanges like Gemini, Crypto.com and Binance. Similarly, MANA, the token native to Decentraland, can be purchased on Coinbase, Kraken and others. Responses to the same survey indicate that a very high percentage of users of the metaverse consider it important to be able to use cryptocurrencies (89%) and stablecoins (84%) for purchases in the metaverse (PayPal (2023)). More than half of metaverse users expect their use of cryptocurrencies to increase in the next five years. Cryptocurrency is also the preferred choice to receive payment for work done in the metaverse (76% of respondents), followed closely by fiat currency (69%) Graph 8.B).
More generally, the structure of payment systems in the metaverse depends on
whether the model for the metaverse is centralised or decentralised....
....MUCH MORE
If interested see also:
The Bank For International Settlements Tokenization/Cyber Projects For 2024
"BIS, World Bank, Swiss National Bank to Tokenize Promissory Notes"
"Tokenized, Inc: BlackRock's Plan To Own The Fractionalized World"
I think they're trying to tell us something.
