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Remember the early days of the Internet when people bought common domain names hoping their value will jump over time. This is what many are trying to do in the cryptocurrency world by buying virtual lands. According to reports, there are many celebrities, artists and investors who are buying virtual land hoping to cash in on the gains. This virtual land can also be used to develop them into art galleries, virtual hotels, among other uses.

Each piece of land is a non-fungible token, or NFT, which is a digital asset with a unique code and just like physical land in the real world it can’t be duplicated. This unique code is like the ownership certificate of the digital asset. There are marketplaces such as Decentraland, The Sandbox and Cryptovoxels where one can buy and sell virtual lands. Most of these online environments have their own currency for transactions.

Recently on March 12, Beeple sold an NFT at the first of its kind auction at Christie’s. He sold his digital artwork called “Everydays: The First 5000 Days” for a huge sum of $69.3 million or Rs 501 crore. The painting was bought by Metakovan, real name Vignesh Sundaresan. According to a Bloomberg report, “Metakovan now plans to put the artwork on display in four virtual world environments. He is working with architects to design gallery complexes that the public can enter via web browsers or virtual reality technology.”

“It is actually a matter of pride that the first christie NFT auction was won by an Indian for $69 Million. I have taken even more pride that he is also an Alumni of my Alma matter BITS, Pilani. For anyone who has played or seen someone playing Minecraft or similar games where there is a virtual real estate, you can easily understand the innovation that NFT has brought in here,” said Vikram Subburaj-Co-Founder and CEO Giottus Crytocurrency Exchange.

He added, “There is a huge market for this currently in the gaming industry and with social media being experimented in the virtual reality space, this industry is just going to see exponential growth. Imagine someone holds the NFT rights of the Ultra high-resolution clipping of MS Dohni hitting the six to win the world cup. He can put this up in a display in his virtual world where passers-by can view that high-resolution video for a fee using their VR headset. That might sound futuristic now. But behold, the tech for that has already started seeing light now – NFT & VR.”

NFTs are popular mainly as game entities, wearables and art. Crypto lovers have now started showing interest in Metaverse, which is a collective virtual shared space. Nischal Shetty had told Money9 in an interview, “The NFT market is very new. Most of us are discussing it this year, but it actually started in 2017 with CryptoKitties. It was like the first time that NFTs as a concept emerged. In 2020 what you’re seeing is all the artists around the world getting in. About $2 to $3 million worth of NFTs is being sold every day. This number is increasing rapidly. It does fluctuate, but the average is $3 million a day is being sold globally.”

To give you an idea of how a virtual land works the website of Decentraland states “Decentraland is permanently owned by the community, giving them full control over their creations. Users claim ownership of virtual land on a blockchain-based ledger of parcels. Landowners control what content is published to their portion of land, which is identified by a set of cartesian coordinates (x,y). Contents can range from static 3D scenes to interactive experiences such as games.”