Tillmann Prüfer is a member of the editor-in-chief of “Zeit-Magazin”.
In the early 2000s, a man named Dennis Hope made a name for himself when he seriously claimed the moon. He did this with reference to an ancient American law, according to which anyone can stake a claim for themselves. If nobody objects, you can call the property your own after a certain period of time. So Hope has reclaimed the moon and declared itself the rightful owner of the celestial body.
Once in possession of the moon, he immediately started selling properties there. In return for a payment, the buyer received a beautiful certificate. The business model was very successful. There has even been debate as to whether NASA should now be fined for dumping its space junk on Hope’s property. A lawsuit against the moon seller was dismissed because the court for jurisdiction on the moon declared itself not competent.
Now you could say that it is generally nonsense to buy a property that you can never set foot on. But that’s actually common practice. For example, a number of properties have already been sold in the Metaversum, on the virtual platform on which companies like Meta (formerly Facebook) want to work intensively.
>>> Read appropriate to the topic: Billion market or billion grave? What the Metaverse is really capable of
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It is said that virtual properties worth 500 million dollars have already been sold. One investor spent $450,000 to be allowed to be the virtual neighbor of rapper Snoop Dogg’s virtual self on the virtual gaming platform Sandbox.
Is it worth it? But maybe that’s not all that important. The main thing is that you can resell the property to someone who wants to be the virtual neighbor of the virtual Snoop Dogg even more urgently.
A nice Valentine’s Day gift
Virtual goods are now traded as NFTs. An NFT is a digital item that cannot be copied and can be embossed on any type of file like a signature. Gustav Klimt’s painting “The Kiss” was recently cut into 10,000 pieces by the Belvedere Museum in Vienna and sold for Valentine’s Day. What to do with a virtual snippet is unclear, but that’s true for a lot of NFTs.
You don’t really know what they are good for, but you can definitely imagine that they will be worth a lot one day. And our dreams are always the most dear to us. Whether it’s the dream of owning a Klimt, waving to a virtual rapper over a virtual hedge, or living on the moon, the best commodities appear to be those that exist only in our imaginations.
Incidentally, you can now also purchase land on Mercury, Mars or Venus. In case it got too crowded on the moon.
More: Earning money in the metaverse – what is already working and which ideas have potential