An analysis from the American multinational investment bank and financial services, Citi, has revealed that the total addressable market (TAM) for the metaverse economy could be between $8 trillion and $13 trillion by 2030, with up to five billion users, but getting there will necessitate significant infrastructure investment.
The analysis was released by the American financial services on Thursday projecting the future Metaverse Economy.
Virtual reality, augmented reality, and the internet have combined to create the metaverse, an immersive digital world.
According to the bank, the metaverse’s content streaming environment will most likely require a “computational efficiency improvement over 1000 times today’s levels,” which will necessitate investment in areas such as storage, network infrastructure, consumer hardware, and game development platforms.
According to the bank’s analysts, the metaverse concept is not new. However, by the end of 2021, interest in the metaverse had really taken off, thanks to a surge in non-fungible-token (NFT) sales and prominent tech corporations announcing their interest in the field.
NFTs are blockchain-based digital assets that can be sold or traded to represent ownership of virtual or physical goods.
Citi noted that while playing a video game on a virtual reality (VR) headset is currently the most popular way to experience the metaverse, it is feasible that the “metaverse is going towards becoming the next generation of the internet or Web 3.”
According to the reports, this “open metaverse” would be “community-owned, community-governed, and a freely interoperable version that protects privacy by design.” Commerce, art, journalism, advertising, healthcare, and social collaboration are among its application cases, according to the company.
What qualifies as money in this open metaverse is predicted to differ from what counts as money in the actual world, with various forms of cryptocurrency, as well as fiat currencies, central bank digital currencies (CBDCs), and stablecoins, expected to prevail.
Thus, the reports however maintained that If the metaverse is the next generation of the internet, it will be scrutinized more closely by regulators, policymakers, and governments, with issues like anti-money laundering rules, decentralized finance (DeFi), crypto assets, and property rights all needing to be addressed.
