Ted Audio Collective

I'm Elise Hugh, it's Ted Talks Daily.

Amid all the talk about AI, we're hearing less about the metaverse and blockchain technologies.

But future focus technologist Yatsu lays out in his Ted 2023 talk how metaverses, blockchain,

and the ecosystem of what's known as Web 3 have quietly grown and gotten more interesting.

After the break.

You've all seen the bombastic headlines, the metaverse is dead.

But is it actually true?

I was certainly alarmed by the media reporting on the alleged demise on the industry in which

I'm so involved in, so I thought I'd check in on the metaverse, see how it was doing.

The metaverse is very young after all and we should keep an eye on it.

And what I found was that the metaverse was very much the same metaverse as last I checked,

except it had grown bigger and more impactful.

I saw a place where millions of people who had been financially excluded find employment

and real economic opportunities.

I saw a place where participants either singly or in groups formed complex systems that

very much resembled the workings of modern capitalist societies.

I saw a place last year that generated over $30 billion of economic activity and had

treasuries maintained by those same communities to the tune of $12 billion.

Now let's put that a little bit in context.

The metaverse has reserves just below that of the fiscal reserves of New Zealand and

greater economic activity than the GDP of Cyprus, Iceland and a hundred other countries.

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