JPMorgan Opens a Lounge in Decentraland – JPMorgan Chase has launched a lounge in Decentraland, as the largest bank in the US seeks to profit on what it calls the metaverse’s “limitless” opportunities.
The bank’s Onyx lounge is located in Metajuku, a virtual recreation of Tokyo’s Harajuku shopping district, in Decentraland, one of the most popular metaverses. On the first level, a tiger roams the halls, while a portrait of the bank’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, hangs on the wall.
The second story is reached by a twisting staircase, where a person’s avatar can watch experts discuss the crypto market.
JPMorgan’s entry into virtual real estate comes on the heels of the bank’s release of a white paper on metaverse potential, which it claims could someday create $1 trillion in annual income.
The metaverse is a virtual environment where people can connect, attend events, and explore as digital avatars of themselves. Its definition is a little hazy, but it’s widely thought to be a virtual world where people can interact.
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Christine Moy, JPMorgan’s global head of Liink, Crypto & the Metaverse, said the paper was written to “help clients cut through the noise and highlight what we would love to see built or scaled next in commercial infrastructure, tech, privacy & identity, workforce, and social governance” in the metaverse in a tweet.
The bank, for example, envisions increased virtual real estate ownership, with decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) serving as the financial arm for those acquisitions.
The average price of a block of virtual land quadrupled to $12,000 from $6,000 in just six months in 2021, according to the analysis. JPMorgan expects a new workforce and more virtual concerts like Ariana Grande’s in the future.
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“We are now at a tipping point,” according to the report, “where it appears that not a day goes by without a company or celebrity announcing that they are establishing a presence in a virtual world.”
JPMorgan noted that the price of tokens supporting metaverses like Decentraland, the Sandbox, and Somnium Space soared after the company formerly known as Facebook rebranded to Meta as a sign of its push into virtual worlds, citing the news. Other businesses, such as Nike and Microsoft, have attempted to tap into the metaverse’s potential.
