In 2018, he told The New Yorker he was especially drawn to the adopted son of Julius Caesar, Augustus.
Starting at 18, Augustus ruthlessly eliminated his murdered father’s enemies… turned Rome from a republic into an empire… and conquered large parts of Egypt, northern Spain, and Central Europe.
Zuckerberg’s connection with the emperor runs so deep, he even named his second daughter August.
It makes sense when you think about Zuckerberg’s own career.
In 2004, as a 19-year-old Harvard sophomore, he cofounded Facebook, the world’s most powerful social media company.
Roughly 3 billion people use Facebook-owned platforms today. That’s more than 60 times as many people as Augustus ruled over.
Last Friday, the 37-year-old tech gazillionaire changed his company’s name from Facebook (FB) to Meta (MVRS) to announce his newest conquest – the metaverse.
As I (Chris Lowe) have been showing you, the metaverse is the next evolution of the internet. Instead of looking at 2D web pages on a screen, you step inside 3D worlds by way of an avatar (a digital representation of yourself).
But as you’ll see today, the big winners from the metaverse won’t be shares in Meta and other Silicon Valley giants that profit by harvesting data from their users.
It’ll be the cryptocurrencies associated with blockchain-based virtual worlds.
That’s why the metaverse is front and center on the radar of colleague Jeff Brown. It isn’t just some fancy new way of surfing the Web. It’s a massive catalyst for mainstream adoption of cryptos.
When most folks try to explain what the metaverse is, they focus on the computer-game-like 3D worlds it will contain.
And those will play a big role in distinguishing the metaverse from the version of the internet we use today.
But many of these virtual worlds will be built on secure blockchains and will have vibrant crypto-based economies.
Take Decentraland.
It’s a blockchain-based virtual world where folks can buy, sell, and develop digital land. From there, they can make money from content and apps they create for other users.
Buying land in Decentraland is much like buying an internet domain name. (Our domain name at Legacy is legacyresearch.com.)
Once you have a domain name, you can set up a web page and a virtual business at that address.
The same goes for land in Decentraland. Once you own some, you can set up a virtual business there. If people want to check it out, you give them map coordinates instead of a web address.
That stands for decentralized autonomous organization.
A DAO has no executives or management teams. Instead of a CEO calling the shots, users own the organization. And token holders vote on changes. The results are then recorded on a blockchain for all to see.
According to our tech expert, Jeff Brown, DAOs such as Decentraland will be common in the metaverse. Jeff…
If set up correctly, a DAO can be extremely robust because there’s no single point of failure. There’s no one person who can change the rules… issue more crypto… or block or censor users.
Instead, DAOs allow users to come together to solve complex problems – each contributing what they can to drive the project forward. And everyone is financially incentivized in the same way. The more successful the DAO, the greater the value of the token it issues.
Facebook is too big and too well-funded not to play a role in the metaverse. But it only wants to gain more access to our lives so it can profit from collecting more of our personal data.
The future of the metaverse will be distributed, open, and accessible to all. And DAOs will play a big role. They allow their users to share in the remarkable wealth creation that has already begun.
For instance… in response to Zuckerberg’s endorsement of the metaverse, the crypto you use to buy land in Decentraland, MANA, shot up 252%.
It’s where people go to play a bunch of different games with cute, Pokémon-like digital pets called Axies.
But there’s a twist…
It’s also blockchain-based. It will eventually become a DAO.
And the “points” you earn are denominated in crypto you can cash out for local currency.
Already, Axie Infinity has about 2 million daily players. It generates about $1.5 billion in annual revenues.
And AXS, the token associated with the game, has exploded in price.
At the start of the year, you could buy one AXS for under $0.60. Today, one AXS trades for about $137.
That’s a 22,755% gain year-to-date.
It translates into massive gains for Axie players.
It lets you use its social media platforms for free. But it spies on everything you do… harvests your data… and sells it to the highest bidder to target ads at you.
That isn’t going to change now that Facebook has changed its name to Meta.
Anyone who steps into the company’s virtual world can expect to be spied on around the clock.
And unlike Decentraland or Axie Infinity – which reward users with crypto – all the profits Meta makes will go into the company’s coffers.
It’s a big deal that Zuckerberg sees a bright future for the metaverse.
He’s been a regular whipping boy here at the Cut. But he’s also one of the most ruthless and successful CEOs in Silicon Valley.
That he sees such potential in the metaverse tells us it’s picking up some serious momentum.
But so far, the most popular metaverse worlds are blockchain-based. And instead of treating their users like products, they allow users and founders to profit together through crypto-based economies.
So instead of rushing out and buying shares in Zuckerberg’s Meta (MVRS)… consider picking up some bitcoin (BTC) and ether (ETH) instead.
These are the world’s top crypto assets. And they’re going to soar as the metaverse sends crypto closer to mainstream adoption.
Regards,
Chris Lowe
November 1, 2021
Barcelona, Spain