(Reuters) – LONDON, Nov 23 (Reuters) – The buyer, crypto investment Tokens.com (COIN.NLB), and Decentraland announced on Tuesday that Decentraland, a piece of virtual real estate in the online domain, had sold for a record $2.4 million in bitcoin.
Decentraland is a virtual world – often known as a “metaverse” – where users can buy land, visit buildings, move around, and interact with other users as avatars.
People have spent more time online this year as a result of the pandemic, and such sites have surged in popularity.
When Facebook changed its name to Meta last month to reflect its focus on developing virtual reality products for the metaverse, it produced a wave of excitement.
Decentraland is a sort of metaverse that makes use of blockchain technology. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), a type of crypto asset, are used to purchase land and other commodities in Decentraland.
Crypto aficionados use Decentraland’s cryptocurrency, MANA, to buy land there as a speculative investment.
According to a Decentraland representative and a statement from Tokens.com, a subsidiary of Tokens.com called the Metaverse Group purchased a piece of real estate for 618,000 MANA on Monday, which was roughly $2,428,740 at the time.
The land acquisition was also documented on the NFT marketplace OpenSea, according to Reuters.
It was the most costly purchase of virtual real estate on the site, according to Decentraland.
The land is located in Decentraland’s “Fashion Street” region, and Tokens.com stated that it will be utilized to organize digital fashion events and sell virtual apparel for avatars.
It is made up of 116 smaller pieces, each measuring 52.5 square feet, for a total land area of 6,090 virtual square feet.
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Tokens.com CEO Andrew Kiguel said the assets would complement Metaverse Group’s existing real estate holdings.
A virtual block of land in Decentraland sold for 1,295,000 MANA, or $913,228 at the time, in June. The purchasers constructed a virtual shopping mall to sell digital apparel, but Reuters has visited the site several times since and has yet to see any customers.
MANA is a very volatile compound. According to Coinbase, it has increased by about 400 percent this month, with a spike following Facebook’s name change.
