I'll try to briefly cover the market, metaverse implications and yet more/escalating mainstream adoption.
The markets are currently at the culmination of the 4-year cycle and basically, all cryptos are pumping. The two largest cap coins in BTC and ETH both set new all-time highs this week after what has probably been 1/4 of the way through the expected bull run. In other words, everything looks set to pump more...and more explosively. Sucks for you if you didn't jump in.
Some top guys are saying that the bull run itself will extend further into next year with large institutional buy-ins coming in January. A few highly respected analysts are going further and claiming that we're at the foot of the super-cycle due to mass adoption along with a culmination of other bullish factors(Decentralised finance, NFTs, Metaverse applications, and futures ETFs being approved in the US...with a spot ETF potentially coming as early as this week.)
I heard crypto being compared to a Trojan Horse. Institutional money simply cannot ignore the massive benefits available in crypto and are forced to buy in and/or offer crypto services to clients. This is the horse that institutions are allowing into Troy.
What's hidden inside the horse is large-scale decentralization that will ultimately see Troy entirely transformed. In fact, there's already no going back to the way things were. See Western Union's stock price for reference.
On to the Metaverse...
As you'll have recently noticed, Zuckerberg’s all in on the Metaverse and changing the parent company's name to Meta while releasing this video where they attempt to give users an idea of what the metaverse will be and how heavily Facebook are leaning into it...
...there's one problem with Zuckie's plan. His Metaverse will be centralised in nature. One step forward, two steps back. People want decentralisation! That is why crypto is blasting any other investment, at any other time in history, out of the water.
For Zucker's Meta to compete with the intrinsic value of metaverses applications built on top of decentralised blockchain will be virtually, excuse the pun, be impossible.
At the end, the crypto community thanks Zuckerberg for marketing the metaverse to his 2,9 billion users since the moment he did so, blockchains and crypto tokens relating to metaverse applications pumped immediately...some of them seeing 100-500% gains within days.
Zucker's problem is that in the past nobody had both the technology AND the capital to compete with him. Crypto has both of those in spades...while also being able to offer more natively trusted products.
And that's really where the next big opportunities in the crypto space are. Chains relating to metaverse applications. Make no mistake, Zucker is 100% correct when he says that this is the next phase of the internet.
From education, business, social, entertainment and travel to instances of practical applications like taking measurements, pictures, readings, direction and an infinity of other tools that increase efficiency and output exponentially.
All of this made possible through either augmented reality with a pair of glasses or full virtual reality with a more involved headset while of course, being connected to a network from which data emanates, is interacted with and shared.
It’s clear that metaverses are the next step in the evolution of mass computing because the technology is both available and use-cases are unlimited in scope.
For now, some of the most obvious opportunities in metaverse-related blockchains are those that facilitate trading, contracts, certification and intellectual property.
Microsoft, not wanting to be left behind, chipped in with news that they'd be building their own metaverse too. Here's an article relating to a metaverse patent involving Apple.
If Apple and Microsoft decide to go with decentralised versions for their metaverses, the blockchains they operate on top of might just be one of the safest and profitable investments of this decade.
Finally, this article nicely articulates some of the inevitable issues that Apple and others will face more and more as metaverse technology developes. Customers and developers want to trade directly and cut out the middleman(Apple App store). Apple will have to adapt and figure how to best capitalise on decentralised platforms. And they're not alone, most of big tech will need to do the same or risk becoming the next Kodak.
Fun times ahead.
And finally, crypto adoption.
Forbes recently released an article calling the rush to crypto adoption an "arms race". One doesn't really need to read the article because the title does say it all and it's exactly what is occurring. Every bih tech platform is adopting crypto in some way, banks all over the world are offering crypto services and retail adoption appears to be endlessly escalating to high and higher numbers. It's estimated that by 2024...two years from now...1,5 billion people will using crypto in some way.
The entire crypto market cap has risen from $1,8trillion to $3,04Trillion since my last update on here. Could it be $5trillion by the next time I post one of these updates?