by Kim Kavin
Soundings Trade Only Online
The virtual boating future is coming, but there aren’t a lot of rules yet for the people building the boats and marinas inside it. Anybody planning to step aboard right now can score some prime waterfront real estate, but also needs to beware of pirates.
That’s the advice from Carolina Milanesi, principal analyst at the Silicon Valley-based consultancy The Heart of Tech, following the news that somebody paid $650,000 for a yacht that exists only in the metaverse, for use at a virtual marina that’s still being built, inside a digital platform so new that nobody can even access it yet. Yup, it actually happened. That was in late November.
To understand what this news means — both today and for virtual boating in the next decade or so — start by thinking about Steven Spielberg’s 2018 movie Ready Player One. In that film, characters put on virtual-reality... [read more]
