Every day you wake up, go to a place called “office”, and say “synergy” 17 times a day to “earn” a piece of paper called “money.” To get this piece of paper, you have to tolerate a “manager” whose greatest talent was to kiss your boss’s ass before you did. And to ensure you kiss ass first next time, you have to spend half your life in Silk Board (traffic).
You work hard every day while resisting every urge to murder your manager, and for what? To buy food, clothes and houses! Who decided we needed these things? It’s a conspiracy by big food, big clothing and big housing.
You then come home and if you’re bored, you need to pay for entertainment. And what passes for entertainment? This guy removing his shirt every chance he gets. They call this acting, but it’s remarkably similar to the faces that my grandpa makes when he is getting a colonoscopy.
You have to follow the rules written by old fossils that should’ve been in a museum 300 years called politicians and lawmakers.
To top it all off, you’ll be robbed every year. As you are getting robbed, you can’t resist or fight the robbers. If you do, then you end up in jail. They have a cute name for this robbery—taxes.
And what do you get for putting up with all this shit in the real world? Terrible traffic; torn jeans that cost more than untorn jeans; skimpy underwear that costs 100 times more than un-skimpy underwear that covers more tushy area; Kangana Ranaut; Republic TV; fund managers who eat 1% of fees every year; and Dalgona Coffee. You get robbed to live in a world that is quite literally burning due to climate change.
You know what? I’m sick of this shit. The real world is dead. Long live the real world!
I’m moving to a new world. Unlike this shitty current physical world, this new world is virtual—it’s called the “metaverse.” It’s a wonderful place where there’s no traffic, no pollution and more importantly, we all get free money from a magic money tree. Even more importantly, it doesn’t stink if you fart. Also, other silly things like no poverty, no hunger and no deodorant are required.
Louis Armstrong sang about this wonderful world way back in 1967:
You might be wondering what does this world look like.
It’s a world that's unlike anything you and I can imagine. It’s a world that doesn’t have to follow the bullshit rules we have in the real world. It’s a wonderful place where you can fart as much as you want next to your coworker, and he wouldn’t even know.
Nobody knows what the metaverse is yet. Nobody agrees on what it is yet, and that’s the beauty. Unlike the physical world, the metaverse is a true democracy. Ask 10 people what the metaverse is, and you’ll get 33 answers. This word is still being built. It’s going to take time. Slowly but surely, the pieces are falling into place.
But to give you a sense, here’s Zuck’s vision of the metaverse👇
It’s beautiful, ain’t it? The metaverse is a real-time 3d virtual world(s) where you can live, get married, work, earn money, scam people and most importantly, fart without your partner or coworker knowing—also, no old fossils making laws.
“In the lingo, this imaginary place is known as the Metaverse. Hiro spends a lot of time in the Metaverse. It beats the shit out of the U-Stor-It.” ― Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
Here’s how it might possibly look like. I mean, since you are a person of low IQ, I have to help you make sense of things visually🤦♀️
And you can see the realization among people that metaverse is the future. Morgan Stanley says so, and if Morgan Stanley says, so, it’s the goddamn gospel:
Admit it, your mind hole is blown, right? 🤯 That’s how every Tipsheet is. It blows minds. Subscribe for regular mind blow jobs👇
For hearth and home 🏡
So, we’ve established that the real world is buggered and that the metaverse is where our redemption and opportunity lies. So to start building a life in the metaverse, the first thing you need is a house. Oh, and I’m not saying you can't be homeless in the metaverse, you totally can. That’s your choice.
Please don’t cancel me for being anti-homeless in the metaverse.
But if you don’t want to get digitally wet, you need a house.
Today, if you want to buy a piece of land in the real world, you need to waste time searching, travelling and negotiating. On top of that, Telugu movie-style land dispute fights, agent commissions, courts and 100 other things. Not in the metaverse! There’s no bullshit in the metaverse. There are no Telugu rowdies in the metaverse!
All you need to do is go to metaverses like Decentraland, The Sandbox, CryptoVoxels, Somnium or Next Earth, and you can buy your dream plot of land. And people are buying in droves. Just 4 of these companies had $100 million in sales volume a couple of weeks ago.
Some people are willing to pay any price to escape the disgusting real world. Someone bought a piece of land on Axie, a play-to-earn game, for $2.3 million. The Metaverse Group, a virtual real estate company, acquired 6,090 square feet of land in Decentraland for $2.43 million.
The estate will be developed to facilitate fashion shows and commerce within the exploding digital fashion industry. Metaverse Group also plans to establish partnerships with several existing fashion brands who are looking to connect with new audiences and expand their ecommerce offerings within the metaverse. Metaverse Group will collaborate with Decentraland to curate fashion projects and events on the estate.
The virtual real estate developer, Republic Realm, bought a piece of land in The Sandbox for $4.3 million. I can understand why.
A physical house or land is quite literally useless. I made a handy comparison to help you make the right decision. As you can see, a physical house is quite literally the worst investment you can make:
Buying land and houses in the metaverse can be quite profitable, too. Living in the metaverse and making money, that’s the dream. The real world sucks:
Mr. Kiguel estimates his portfolio in the metaverse is valued at up to 10 times more than its purchase price, and much of the reasoning will sound similar to anyone who has ever bought or sold real estate.
Look, it might be the metaverse, but nobody likes naked people roaming around. So you need some clothes. Also, the risk of digital winter and digital frostbite. All the major fashion brands have realized that most of the clothes they manufacture end up in landfills polluting the world. The chemicals from dyeing clothes end up in the rivers killing fish fry and making people grow horns and tails.
Also, over a period of time, clothes have become way too costly. What else explains underwear becoming skimpier, jeans getting torn, and fashion becoming real ugly👇
Most importantly, 10-12-year-old Chinese, Vietnamese, and Bangladeshi kids whose first world after they are born are Dolce & Gabbana make these clothes with their itty bitty hands.
But not in the metaverse. Once again, the metaverse is here to save the day. When you produce clothes in the metaverse, there’s no pollution, and there’s no child labour, and no ugly clothes and the prices are cheap.
All the major cheap and luxury fashion brands have realized this and are making a beeline to the metaverse. Brands like Dolce & Gabbana, Louis Vuitton (pronounced as Luis Vitton), Ralph Lauren, Balenciaga and DKNY have set up shop and have been selling digital fashion items in various forms.
Dolce and Gabbana sold these 9 NFTs for $5.65 million, and no Chinese kids were involved in the making. Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana designed them personally.
Adidas partnered with the Bored Ape Yacht Club—a community of people who own Bored Ape NFTs or pictures of monkeys—and also bought virtual real estate on The Sandbox. Probably it’ll open a digital shoe shop. Nike also has big plans to sell digital shoes in the metaverse.
If you're in the metaverse every day, then you'll need digital clothes, digital tools, and different experiences. Our goal is to help the metaverse reach a billion people and hundreds of billions of dollars of digital commerce this decade.
So how do you not be naked in the metaverse? Just go to DressX—it’s like Amazon for digital fashion. Pick a clothing item, buy and get a picture of you wearing it and you’re good to be not naked in the metaverse.
Here’s what Daria Shapovalova, co-founder of DressX, said recently. She’s a virtual hero:
Digital fashion is more inclusive because it eliminates the size issue, while also giving consumers access to clothes that were not accessible before. When producing a real physical tee versus a digital one, it is worth noting that digital one saves 97% of carbon emissions. Also, digital clothing helps us save our planet’s resources.
She also thinks that the total addressable market for digital fashion is $31 billion.
Now, people who are Not Going To Make It (NGMI) will tell you that you are stupid to pay real money for digital clothes. They’ll tell you that you can’t wear them in real life. They’ll tell that if you spend too much money on digital clothes and that you might not be naked in the metaverse, but you will be naked and freeze your ass off in the real world. This is exactly why these people will remain poor in their ugly looking clothes in this disgusting real world. They don’t get the metaverse, and they deserve poverty!
What’s the use of real money and real clothes if this real world is ending?
Oh, the lament of the poor!
👨👩👧👦 Meta wife & husband for the metaverse
If you want to get married, live happily in the metaverse and forget this godforsaken real world, you don’t have to worry. True love is present everywhere. As Anne Hathaway said in the movie Interstellar:
Love is the one thing we're capable of perceiving... that transcends dimensions of time and space. Maybe we should trust that, even if we can't understand it yet.
Here’s what the Match Group, which owns Tinder, said in a recent shareholder letter:
One of these new innovations is a very different dating app experience, leveraging several metaverse experiences, which recently started testing in their home market of South Korea. The experience includes a live virtual world, Single Town, in which singles, represented by 9 their avatars, can move around, and engage with others by audio in various virtual locations. Users can express mutual interest in each other in this virtual world, enabling them to connect privately. This experience is still in its early stages but it could become a standalone app and could also inspire an enhanced experience to discover and meet people that we leverage across our portfolio. This new experience provides a glimpse into how metaverse experiences could be applicable to dating and it is the sort of innovation that will help us evolve our portfolio as we enter the next phase of dating.
Traci and Dave Gagnon met in the cloud, so it only made sense that their wedding took place in it. On Labor Day weekend, the couple — or rather, their digital avatars — held a ceremony staged by Virbela, a company that builds virtual environments for work, learning and events.
“Look at the power of time and human intelligence, few years ago we could not live well in the natural world and now we are going to live in the virtual world very soon” ― Anuj Jasani
⛵ My Jolly Sailor Bold
I’m sure we’ve all dreamt of sailing on the blue oceans and enjoying a sunset at one point or the other. But today’s oceans are polluted cesspools of plastic and sewage. They are disgusting, but not in the metaverse.
Republic Realm recently sold The Metaflower NFT Super Mega Yacht for $650,000.
You might again be wondering, isn’t that quite costly for a boat that you can’t touch, feel or sail in real life? At this point, I am getting sick and tired of all these ridiculous questions from people who are deliberately trying to be poor.
Anyways, to answer the question of the poor people, you can sail this boat in the oceans on metaverse. The oceans are sparkling blue and unpolluted. Imagine your virtual family sailing happily on the metaverse ocean and catching virtual Bangada Fish and frying it on a virtual frying pan and eating virtually? Can you put a price on that? $650,000 seems like the deal of a lifetime!
Ignore the poor people. They are Not Going To Make It (NGMI). If you can afford a virtual boat, buy it, it’ll be the best investment you will ever make.
👩🏭 Work is worship
Of course, to buy digital food and clothes and land, you need money. But lucky for you, working in the metaverse doesn’t have to be as soul-crushing as the real world. You don’t have to wake up, go to the office, suck up to your manager and say “synergy” 32 times a day.
Working in the metaverse is fun. It’s quite literally a game. Take the case of Axie Infinity, a blockchain game similar to Pokémon with over 200,000 players and $3 billion in sales. In Axie, you have to breed monsters and battle other players. If you win, you earn in-game tokens that you can sell for actual real disgusting dollars. Similarly, there are countless other games you can play and be your own boss.
Look at the returns of these game tokens compared to absolutely useless real-world investments like Nifty and S&P 500. They look like jokes.
When you work in the metaverse, you not only enjoy work, but you make boatloads of money without having to suck up your manager and say “synergy” 27 times a day. Oh and, you don’t have to wear suits and shit. You can work in your underwear🩲. That’s what I call freedom!
Other career options
You can be a digital drug dealer. The digital drugs sector is expected to hit $5 trillion by 2076.
People need hair cuts in the metaverse too. The digital barber sector is expected to be worth $250 billion according to Meta Barber.
You can be a digital fashion designer. As you saw above, you can make millions designing digital t-shirts and lungis and no pollution either!
Metaverse wedding planner.
If you want some thrills, you can be a scamster (income redistributor) in the metaverse. People will be idiots, whether in the real world or in the metaverse, so you will always have plenty of patsies.
Digital real estate agent.
Digital fund manager. You can keep making 1% and underperform in the metaverse too.
Pretty soon, you won’t have trouble finding a job in the metaverse because everybody wants to be there. Again, an image from Morgan Stanely. If it’s from a Morgan Stanely report, it’s always true, they’re never wrong. These research reports are not bullshit at all!
🍀 Meri Jane
Look, we’ve all had stressful days, and we’ve rolled up a joint to relax. But in this disgusting polluted real world, smoking marijuana is illegal in most places. Even though there are reams of scientific evidence on the health benefits of weed, these disgusting real-world politicians haven’t legalized it.
But not in the metaverse. The metaverse is a place of enlightenment and culture. Meet Jessie Grundy. Jessie has been selling weed since he was in high school. Now, he is selling digital weed.
But now Grundy is selling what he believes is a world’s-first: a bag of cannabis, that exists only online, linked to blockchain technology for “authenticity.”
You can smoke this and relax without worrying about digital cops coming and catching you. As NWA famously sang—Fuk Da Police.
🔮 The future is now!
The Metaverse will be far yuger than the physical world. It’s the yugest thing you’ll ever see in your life!
Here’s another reason why I am moving to the metaverse. The world economy is in the doldrums. It’s bloody sucks!
Populations are the world are ageing, and pensions have trillions in shortfalls. This means that most old people will be homeless. The world is becoming one giant retirement home. Moreover, young people have stopped having sex to make things worse. No sex + old people = empty world. Good riddance!
Global GDP growth has been falling off a cliff. The world economy is dying!
Productivity growth is falling off a cliff. Work sucks and people aren’t getting paid properly.
The world is a highly unequal place. The rich are getting richer doing nothing while the poor are doing more just to stay poor and not become extremely poor
Global debt is at a historic high. We are stealing from the future generation to pay for the sins of the present generation.
The real-world economy is in the gutters. Why do you want to live in this desolate heap of rubble? Civilization is ending, and if you don’t go to the metaverse now, you’ll regret it!
Luckily, the metaverse economy will dwarf the real-world economy. It will be at least worth 5-10 times the size of the real-world economy at a conservative estimate.
I am an economist, believe me!
Not just me, here’s what Jensen Huang, the CEO of NVIDIA, said recently. NVIDIA is a tech company that makes hardware required to power the metaverse:
“The economy in the metaverse will be larger than the economy in the physical world," - Jensen Huang.
I think that the virtual world will be larger than the real one in terms of the economy. For virtual worlds, more different things will be created - buildings, houses, cars, clothes, bags, etc., than for the real world. Because physical worlds must obey the laws of preserving mass and energy, and this does not apply to the virtual world, "said Jensen Huang in a conversation with TAdviser.
Based on precedent, however, we can guess that the Metaverse will revolutionize nearly every industry and function. From healthcare to payments, consumer products, entertainment, hourly labor, and even sex work. In addition, altogether new industries, marketplaces and resources will be created to enable this future, as will novel types of skills, professions, and certifications. The collective value of these changes will be in the trillions.
Here’s a snippet from a report by Grayscale, an asset management company that offers exposure to crypto assets like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, among others:
The Metaverse is a digital universe that moves beyond the internet we know today. This vision for the future state of the web has the potential to transform our social interactions, business dealings, and the internet economy at large. The Metaverse is still taking shape, but Web 3.0 open virtual world crypto networks are offering a glimpse of what the future of the internet may hold. The market opportunity for bringing the Metaverse to life may be worth over $1 trillion in annual revenue and may compete with Web 2.0 companies worth ~$15 trillion in market value today. This potential has attracted companies like Facebook to pivot towards the Metaverse, which may serve as a catalyst for other Web 2.0 tech giants and investors to follow.
The real world economy is dead. Long live the real world economy! Jai metaverse!
🐺 The centralized boy who cried wolf
Given that the real world will be pretty much useless if all the people move to the metaverse, a lot of vested interests have been working hard to destroy the reputation of the metaverse. They shout and scream that the metaverse will be a haven for criminals:
A vast collection of virtual gated communities where every visitor is constantly monitored, analyzed and barraged with advertisements? Or foregoes any attempt to curtail user freedom, allowing scammers, human traffickers and cybergangs to commit crimes with impunity?
They cry that NFTs, which are an important part of the metaverse, are being used by criminals for money laundering. They cry hoarse that it’ll get really bad and that NFTs must be regulated yesterday. They’ll show you actual research with proof and facts that NFT trading is suspiciously concentrated among a very small group of people:
Top 10% of traders alone perform 85% of all transactions and trade at least once 97% of all assets.
The top 10% of buyer–seller pairs contributing to the total number of transactions as much as the remaining 90%
They’ll tell you that NFTs are being used for wash trading:
A wash trade is a form of market manipulation in which an investor simultaneously sells and buys the same financial instruments to create misleading, artificial activity in the marketplace.
They’ll show you research about how wash trading is not just rampant in NFTs but the whole of the crypto ecosystem which powers the metaverse:
We estimate the average wash trading to be 53.4% of trading on unregulated Tier-1 exchanges and 81.8% on Tier-2 exchanges and provide several robustness and validation tests. We further provide suggestive evidence that wash trading inflates exchange rankings and cryptocurrency prices, in addition to being significantly predicted by market signals such as past cryptocurrency prices and volatility and exchange characteristics such as exchange age and userbase.
They’ll cry that NFTs are being used for money laundering and even describe the process step by step:
Let’s say Mark has $10 million in illegal profits from his scheme.
Step 2: Buy your own JPEG for $10M (with the illegal money)
Step 3: Claim $10 million in clean profits! Woo Hoo!
Tax evasion through NFTs can also be easily achieved through the same strategies employed using physical art: mint eleven NFT’s, sell one to a friend for $10,000, donate the other ten for a $100,000 loss. Easy-peasy!
DeFi users and investors has suffered more than $12 billion in losses due to theft and fraud
These losses are accelerating, with losses totaling $10.5 billion in 2021 to date, up from $1.5 billion in 2020 • DeFi is also being used to launder proceeds of crime - with DEXs, decentralised mixers and cross-chain bridges being exploited
However the unprecedented transparency of DeFi provides law enforcement with new opportunities to follow the money and apprehend criminals.
Every single accusation is true. Of course, NFTs are being used for money laundering. Of course, a lot of NFT trading volumes are wash sales to pump prices and volumes to lure idiots in and launder money. Of course, criminals use NFTs and other in-game tokens for payments. Of course, there are a lot of thieves in crypto and DeFi.
Oh, and by the way, It’s not as if your bloody Picasso’s and DaVinci’s are clean. They were NFTs before NFTs. Traditional art has long been used for money laundering.
Once purchased, the art can disappear from view for years, even decades. A lot of the art bought at auctions goes to freeports – ultra-secure warehouses for the collections of millionaires and billionaires, ranging from Picassos and gold to vintage Ferraris and fine wine. The freeports, which exist in Switzerland, Luxembourg and Singapore, offer a variety of tax advantages because the goods stored in them are technically in transit. The Economist magazine reported that the freeport near the Geneva airport alone is thought to hold $100 billion (U.S.) of art.
Once inside the freeport, the art can be sold privately and anonymously to other buyers. The art need never leave the warehouse after the private sale is completed.
Further, and as noted, other traditional vehicles for laundering money have become less attractive, thereby driving those who need a mechanism to launder large sums into the arms of the art world. As we repeatedly have blogged, one of the most time-honored and relatively convenient vehicles for laundering — real estate — is under intense scrutiny and now is subject in the U.S. to the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (“FinCEN”)’s ongoing Geographic Targeting Orders (these require U.S. title insurance companies in many parts of the U.S. to identify the natural persons behind legal entities used in purchases of residential real estate involving $300,000 or more and performed without a bank loan or similar form of external financing).
The IMF estimates that $3 billion is laundered through shitty looking Picassos and DaVincis—seems rather conservative.
But we decentralized people aren’t doing it with nefarious intent. After all, what’s the bloody point?
Let’s look at the data. According to Chainalysis, large traders account for 60% of NFT volumes.
However, if we think in terms of transaction volume rather than raw transfers, NFT collector-sized and institutional-sized transactions have accounted for a significant portion of NFT activity since March 2021. Specifically, NFT-collector-sized transactions account for the majority of NFT transaction volume during the time period studied at 63%. Institutional transactions (above $100,000) make up 26% of activity, while retail-sized transactions make up 11%.
Large means rich. These people already have enough money to last 10 lifetimes. Why would they have to scam, steal, avoid taxes and launder money? Incrementally earning another million makes no difference to a rich guy with $100 million.
The reason why these people are using crypto for criminal payments and money laundering is to expose loopholes exploited by criminals so that the government can fix them. They are not doing anything illegal. They are doing valuable social service.
It’s your centralized government with clueless old fossils who are to blame. If they know this is happening, then why aren’t they fixing the issue? It’s like leaving the door to your house open when you know for sure that you are going to be robbed!
The decentralized people in the metaverse are law-abiding, peaceful people who just want what’s best for society. They spend all their time laundering money and wash trading, and evading taxes to highlight the flaws in the traditional financial system. Instead of vilifying these people, they should be given humanitarian awards for their selfless service to protect and strengthen the traditional financial system.
The real world can kiss my left leg toe.
I’m going to metaverse friend, will you join me?
It’s the future.
You don’t believe me? Again, a mandatory slide from Morgan Stanley that makes 173% sense and is not senseless at all! Don trust me. Trust Murugan Stanley!
