Real Money’s Tim Collins sees 2022 as the breakout year for public understanding and investment in the latest tech paradigm.
Ever since Facebook rebranded itself as Meta (MVRS) – Get Meta Report, most everyone interested in tech has been asking themselves questions: Is Silicon Valley capable of building 21st century holodecks or just an expensive social media gimmick? Would a full-sensory internet create a virtual reality Wikipedia or the fresh hell of a fully immersive comment section? Is this really the next big thing or some kind of overhyped video game like Daikatana?
In short, is the metaverse a thing of value or just vaporhype?
Timothy Collins is asking many of the same questions. With his deep interest in emerging technology, he’s willing to take a stab at the answer.
As Collins wrote recently on Real Money, “2022 will be the year of the metaverse. And much of that excitement will be driven by a dramatic expansion of the public’s understanding of what non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are and how they can be utilized.”
He added, “If you follow the NFT market, you’ve already seen it rocket to start the year. Many projects are up 20%, 50%, or 200%+ in the first few trading days of the year.”
Non-fungible tokens are built with the blockchain coding format. (Readers should understand that “blockchain” is a data storage and coding format.) This approach to data storage has, at least for now, solved the problem of establishing unique ownership over digital files and assets. You can still copy data stored on a blockchain as many times as you want (since that’s how computers work) but every, single copy will always say who it belongs to.
While blockchain has made very few inroads into consumer technology, being used almost exclusively for speculation assets such as cryptocurrency and NFT’s, solving the problem of “how can you own something online” is a huge deal. Proponents hope that it will eventually change the very nature of the internet.
“Simply put, if Web 1.0 was desktop, the introduction of the browser and banner ads, and Web 2.0 was mobile, streaming media, and social, Web 3.0 is the decentralized web, the creator economy, and the metaverse,” Collins wrote.
And everyone wants in. We already know Zuckerberg is in but so are the folks at Microsoft (MSFT) – Get Microsoft Corporation Report, Roblox (RBLX) – Get Roblox Corp. Class A Report , Epic (the owners of Fortnight), Alphabet (GOOGL) – Get Alphabet Inc. Class A Report and many others.
For the buildout stage, though, Collins sees a play in a relatively unknown company with a $40 billion market cap. Its software helps developers build and operate real-time 3D. “This company is selling the picks, shovels, and ongoing toolset that companies, creators, and entrepreneurs need to participate and monetize within a public or private sector,” Collins wrote.
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