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Blockchain technology is central to the development of the metaverse and Web 3, Goldman Sachs said in a research report.
It is the only technology that can “uniquely identify any virtual object independent of a central authority,” and this ability to identify and track ownership will be crucial to the functioning of the metaverse, analysts led by Rod Hall wrote in a note published on Dec. 14.
From Goldman Sachs Says Blockchain Is Key to Metaverse and Web 3 Development.
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The answers are taking the form of services and apps that are the first outlines of what their creators hope will someday eat the internet completely: a distributed, democratically ruled “Web 3.0” or “Web3” that will rise like a phoenix of 1990s-era Web 1.0-idealism from out of the ashes of the corporation-controlled Web 2.0 that all of us currently inhabit.
From Jack Dorsey and the Unlikely Revolutionaries Who Want to Reboot the Internet – WSJ.
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These technologies represent an evolution of cryptocurrency beyond bitcoin—which some in crypto communities now deride as mere “digital gold.” In addition to monetary value, the “tokens” that make up these systems are each also encoded with information that has some other use, whether it’s membership in a club, the right to vote on how a company conducts itself, or even just data.
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If money can become code, then money can be way more than a means of exchange; it can also do anything that other software can do.
This core insight, a sort of E = mc² equivalence between money and software, is why true believers in Web3 think it could have such a huge impact.
From Jack Dorsey and the Unlikely Revolutionaries Who Want to Reboot the Internet – WSJ.
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But there’s also an entirely new type of commerce that we’re likely to see in the Metaverse, including buying clothes or items for our digital avatars. We’ve already seen this happen with games, like Fortnite, where users can buy outfits for their digital characters. That phenomenon is likely to expand as people begin to create a digital identity that travels with them across different experiences, and it’s very likely that Facebook could be the place users create and maintain that virtual identity.
From Facebook’s Metaverse Ambitions Could Boost Its Shopping Business – Bloomberg:
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WeChat and Alipay were mobile wallets before becoming superapps. Their success is largely due to the underlying payments foundation that glues together the multitude of services available on each platform and makes it easier for users to try new ones.
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On Dec. 2, a month after Ms. Baumann first appealed to Instagram to restore her account, The New York Times contacted Meta to ask why it had been shut down… Two days later, the account was back online.
From Her Instagram Handle Was ‘Metaverse.’ Last Month, It Vanished. – The New York Times:
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In 2012, she had started an Instagram account with the handle @metaverse, a name she used in her creative work. On the account, she documented her life in Brisbane, where she studied fine art, and her travels to Shanghai, where she built an augmented reality company called Metaverse Makeovers.
She had fewer than 1,000 followers when Facebook, the parent company of Instagram, announced on Oct. 28 that it was changing its name. Henceforth, Facebook would be known as Meta, a reflection of its focus on the metaverse, a virtual world it sees as the future of the internet.
In the days before, as word leaked out, Ms. Baumann began receiving messages from strangers offering to buy her Instagram handle. “You are now a millionaire,” one person wrote on her account. Another warned: “fb isn’t gonna buy it, they’re gonna take it.”
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Continue reading the main storyOn Nov. 2, exactly that happened.
Early that morning, when she tried to log in to Instagram, she found that the account had been disabled. A message on the screen read: “Your account has been blocked for pretending to be someone else.”
From Her Instagram Handle Was ‘Metaverse.’ Last Month, It Vanished. – The New York Times:
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It’s a bad sign for a means of payment when the government has to force people to accept it.
From Opinion | Cash Is Out. Crypto Is In. What’s Happening to Money? – The New York Times:
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In much of Europe and East Asia you can go for weeks without touching paper money or coins. In 2013, a bank robber in Sweden was thwarted because the bank he targeted didn’t have any money to steal: The branch was a cashless location.
From Opinion | Cash Is Out. Crypto Is In. What’s Happening to Money? – The New York Times:
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In the late 1990s, parametric insurance emerged as an objective and data-driven approach to insurance claim payments. Under parametric insurance models, claim payments are based solely on the occurrence of a clearly defined event/objective measurable data-led criteria and provide an agreed payments or an amount calculated by reference to agreed formulae. For example, if an earthquake occurs within a set radius of a policyholder’s home (measured in kilometres), then the insurer automatically pays out the agreed amount corresponding to that event.
The parametric insurance model is attractive as it avoids subjective assessment of damages and loss. While the uptake of parametric insurance is increasing in first party loss classes (especially the agriculture and crop sectors), it has not progressed as rapidly as expected due to the historical lack of reliable infrastructure and available data for securely settling these forms of contracts.
From Blockchain Technology and the Future of the Global Insurance Industry : Clyde & Co.
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In particular, if it were possible for capital to be allocated effectively without the trust and authority of large centralized capital providers (“Wall Street” so to speak), that would be a foundational advance. In that regard, what I’d be looking for is evidence of capital allocation via cryptocurrencies toward productive investment in the operating economy rather than capital allocation toward imaginary assets.
From Why it’s too early to get excited about Web3 – O’Reilly.
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