LONDON – A piece of virtual real estate in the online world Decentraland sold for a record $ 2.4 million ($ 3.3 million) in cryptocurrency, buyers from crypto investor Tokens.com and Decentraland said Tuesday ( 23
Decentraland is an online environment – also called a Metaverse – where users can buy land, visit buildings, walk around, and meet people as avatars.
Such environments have grown in popularity this year as the pandemic resulted in people spending more time online.
Interest rose last month when Facebook changed its name to Meta to reflect its focus on developing virtual reality products for the Metaverse.
Decentraland is a special type of metaverse that uses blockchain. Land and other items are sold in Decentraland in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a type of crypto-asset.
Crypto enthusiasts buy land there as a speculative investment and use Decentraland’s cryptocurrency, MANA.
A subsidiary of Tokens.com, the Metaverse Group, bought land Monday for 618,000 MANA, which was around $ 2,428,740 at the time, a Decentraland spokesman said and a statement from Tokens.com said.
Reuters also saw the land purchase on the NFT marketplace OpenSea.
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Decentraland said it was the most expensive virtual property purchase on the platform.
The land is in the Fashion Street area on Decentraland’s map, and Tokens.com said it would be used to host digital fashion events and sell virtual clothing for avatars.
It is made up of 116 smaller parcels, each 52.5 square feet in size, giving the land a size of 6,090 square feet.
Andrew Kiguel, CEO of Tokens.com, said the assets would complement properties already held by Metaverse Group.
In June, a virtual lot in Decentraland was sold for 1,295,000 MANA, valued at $ 913,228 at the time. Buyers built a virtual mall to sell digital clothing, but Reuters has visited this site several times since then and seen no buyers.
MANA is very volatile. According to Coinbase, it has grown around 400 percent this month, which has skyrocketed after Facebook changed its name.