Metaverse grabbing eyeballs, Morgan Stanley calls it ‘next big investment theme’

With Facebook recently rebranding itself as Meta, there has been an exponential growth in interest in the “Metaverse.” So much so, that executives from this leading banking institution are weighing in on it. Morgan Stanley, one of the biggest investment banks in the world, put forward a vote of confidence for metaverse, a decentralized virtual world. They even went on to term it as ‘the next big investment theme’ within the ecosystem.

Now, what is this Metaverse? Well, it is a virtual world for immersive experiences where people across the world can meet, play, watch, and trade. Even so, some stock sectors are already benefiting from it. Companies such as Meta Platforms Inc. (formerly Facebook) and Microsoft have pivoted their focus to the Internet’s next iteration.

Morgan Stanley has predicted that the metaverse projects would dominate the majority of the investment in the coming years. Morgan Stanley strategist Edward Stanley stated

“It can fundamentally change the medium through which we socialize with others.”

One could even learn and/or speculate on digital assets such as non-fungible tokens (NFTs). As mentioned before, more and more companies are moving to include these activities and elements in their projects. Companies such as Roblox, Naver, and others are all currently building metaverses on their own company platforms. Just recently, Disney expressed its interest concerning the same.

Moving on, Stanley reiterated:

“Newsflow around the metaverse concept has been high and companies are embracing it in growing numbers. Of any major theme, companies and analysts have greater interest in the metaverse than any other theme at present.”

Consider this, addressable market of metaverse by sub-theme looks like the following:

Source: Insider

Having said that, it is still in the very early phases. The metaverse does exist but not yet in its “purest form”. Nonetheless,

“This will take many years and cross-company collaboration to allow users to seamlessly move across millions of experiences and take their digital avatars and possessions around with them,” he said.

In addition to this, the target audience for the metaverse at present is young gamers. “The average age is rising, and could be accessed over phone or PC gaming platforms,” the report noted. This is another reason why crypto gaming, incorporating NFTs is booming as well. Some also agree that the gaming and metaverse combination could onboard a billion users into this sector.

Overall, the metaverse mania had gripped the crypto sector. Over the last month, metaverse tokens seen rather hyped rallies and quite a bit of social media attention. At press time, the market cap stood at $27.8B with an 8.6% surge in 24 hours