The price of a cryptocurrency that can be used in a metaverse leaped 164% in 12 hours, the New York Post reported Sunday (Oct. 31), citing data from Coinbase. Decentraland’s MANA virtual reality cryptocurrency reached $4.33 Saturday evening; a week earlier, it had been around 80 cents.
The increase in value followed Facebook’s rebranding to Meta, reflecting the company’s plan to create a “metaverse,” and experts noted that this had created huge potential in the virtual world market, the report noted.
“MANA’s leading position in the metaverse ecosystem will likely be solidified further by Facebook’s move to rebrand and focus on building its own extension to the digital world,” said Denis Vinokourov, head of research at Synergia Capital, according to Coindesk, as reported by the New York Post.
In Decentraland’s metaverse, users can buy digital art or create a virtual social world. It can be accessed with the digital tokens, the report noted.
Read more: Facebook Rebrands as Meta in Push to Align With Metaverse
Facebook’s name change to Meta was announced Thursday (Oct. 28) at the Facebook Connect augmented and virtual reality conference and showed the company’s drive to shake off its social media origins, PYMNTS reported.
“Today we are seen as a social media company, but in our DNA we are a company that builds technology to connect people, and the metaverse is the next frontier just like social networking was when we got started,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a letter.
Read more: Gaming Platforms Betting On ‘The Metaverse’ As Next Internet
Facebook isn’t alone. Industry and society are moving on to new experiences in futuristic online “worlds” with functioning economies where real-world and virtual events commingle in an evolution of social media-style community and, increasingly, commerce, PYMNTS noted in September 2020.
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