The investment banking firm, Citi released a new report on Thursday revealing 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. However, reaching that market level needs significant infrastructure investment.
The authors reported that the 5 billion estimate is a broad one and that also includes mobile phone users. If the metaverse is limited to VR or AR devices, it expects the audience to be closer to 1 billion.
In Brief:
- The report says money in the Metaverse could be in different forms.
- The report explains a realistic user experience can be made with low latency.
- The report proposes that consumer hardware manufacturers could be the gatekeepers of the Metaverse.
Citi tweeted, “We believe the Metaverse is the next generation of the internet combining the physical and digital world in a persistent and immersive manner and not purely a Virtual Reality world.”
The report claims that currently, the internet infrastructure is unsuitable for building a fully-immersive content streaming Metaverse environment, that could help users to go seamlessly from one experience to another. And hence, investments in a confluence of technology make the vision of Metaverse a reality.
The report explained, “Low latency — the time it takes a data signal to travel from one point on the internet to another point and then come back — is critical to building a more realistic user experience.”
Further, many other predictions were made in the report. For instance, the future finances will be a blend of traditional forms of money and cryptocurrencies, and that money in the Metaverse could be in different forms. NFTs will also play a key role, it says introducing a form of sovereign ownership of digital items for users.
With today’s internet, though, Citi proposes a gap between U.S. or even most international user base and a China version, which blocks certain content. The report proposes that consumer hardware manufacturers could be the gatekeepers of the Metaverse. Although there are other ‘unaddressed’ legal challenges.
“We have a lot to work out” the report says. “If the Metaverse(s) is the new iteration of the internet, it will attract great scrutiny from global regulators and policymakers. All the challenges of the Web2 internet could be magnified in the Metaverse, including content moderation, free speech, and privacy.”
As Crypto continues sweeping over the masses, slowly but gradually financial institutions, too, are acknowledging its prospective growth. In a similar incident, the multinational investment company, Goldman Sachs too predicted that Bitcoin will take market share away from gold in 2022 and also cross the $100,000 mark.
