Well, based on the available data, Kepios analysis suggests that virtual worlds need to offer something distinct to the real world if they’re to gain momentum and traction. So what does the future hold for the metaverse? However, there’s precious little evidence to suggest that virtual business meetings with avatars cut off at the waist will catch on any time soon. Research from GWI shows that – on average – working-age internet users spend more than an hour per day playing on a games console, and that doesn’t include the time that they spend playing games on other devices like smartphones.Īnd in more good news for metaverse advocates, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that in-game experiences can also be highly appealing.įor example, 12 million users attended the first day of Travis Scott’s “Astronomical” event in Fortnite in 2020, while Marshmello’s 2019 Fortnite gig attracted close to 11 million people, well before COVID-19 made virtual events the norm. So, even if the NFT market may look like it offers the potential for valuable investment, the data suggests that much of that purported value may in fact be just smoke and mirrors.Īs a result, we’re going to need to move quickly away from scams and novelty – and deliver much greater utility – if we’re to see NFTs fulfil their potential in 2023 and beyond.Īnd people spend a lot of time playing games too. Wash trading is a practice whereby the same trader simultaneously buys and sells an asset that they already own, in order to artificially inflate that asset’s perceived value.Īs an example, you can see that this Loot bag – which reports was one of last month’s most valuable NFT trades – has been repeatedly traded between the same 2 wallets, over and over again.Īnd in fact, despite being traded a total of 448 times so far, this particular NFT has only ever had 4 unique wallet owners. The company also reports that more than half of the value of NFT trades in the first three months of 2022 could be attributed to “wash trading”. However, the amount of time that each individual spends online has remained relatively stable over recent years, and in fact, we’ve seen the global average fall slightly over recent months.īut that’s still not the scariest finding in NonFungible’s data On average, the typical internet user now spends more than 40 percent of their waking life using connected devices and services.Īnd that means that the world’s internet population will spend a combined total of more than 1.4 billion years of collective human existence using the internet in 2022 alone. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of people still need to walk more than half an hour to access basic drinking water, so it’s clear that there are other, far more important challenges to address before we can bring these populations online.Īs a result of these challenges, we expect to see digital user growth rates slow from here on, especially compared with some of the more elevated growth rates we saw during the height of the pandemic.īut it’s not just user growth rates that have slowed. However, there are still various barriers preventing billions of people who do want to use the internet from coming online.įor example, in many parts of the world, less than half of the population currently has access to electricity, and in South Sudan, that figure is barely 1 in 15 people. Now, it’s unlikely that we’d ever reach universal internet connectivity, partly because there will always be some people who choose to remain offline. However, it’s important to recognise that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to “connect” those people who remain offline. Meanwhile, Kepios analysis suggests that more than three-quarters of all eligible audiences aged 13-plus already use social media today, and we’re on track for the global social media user total to reach 5 billion by the end of next year. However, with internet users continuing to grow much faster than the global TV audience, these two numbers should be roughly equal within the next 18 months. That means that – by the end of next year – the internet will reach roughly the same number of people as television.įor context, Statista reports that TV reaches an audience of roughly 5.41 billion people today, compared with an audience of slightly over 5 billion people for connected tech. And at current rates, we can expect roughly two-thirds of the world’s total population to be online by the end of 2023.
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