Digital prestige and wealth. NFTs the future of luxury?

NFT tokens hit the Internet mainstream by storm and very quickly won the hearts and wallets of people – especially young ones. It seems that it’s all over. The fleeting fashion lasted two years, and only unique but worthless pieces of code remained in the digital wallets of non-fungible token lovers. However, the fact that we have not heard about non-fungible tokens yet does not mean that it was a temporary trend. While on the market NFTs there is a capital drought, large companies are starting to invest in this technology with a clearly long-term orientation.

More and more of our lives are slowly being saved in digital form. We used to go to the cinema, today we go to the cinema Netflix. We used to go shopping, and today we visit online stores. In the past, we had to meet to talk – today we are in touch 24 hours a day, 7 days a week via voice and text messaging. Fortunately, physical meetings have not yet become a thing of the past, but – like it or not – everything is leading to the fact that going to a party, a meeting or a coffee will not require leaving the house! This is due to, among others, fledgling metaverse technology (virtual reality), as well as NFTs.

New world, old rules. Metaverse users surround themselves with digital luxury

According to NFTevening,com – Decentraland metaverse visited by 8,000 unique users every day. In turn, the Sandbox metaverse recorded a digital population of 1 million unique users throughout 2022. And these are not the only platforms of this type – he is working on his own, among others. Meta, which is even suggested by the company’s abandonment of the name Facebook as a generic term for a conglomerate of several large social media platforms, i.e., among others Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp. Visionaries – such as Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook – see the future in the metaverse. They notice it too exclusive brands that are moving their physical collections to the digital world. Bah! They even open their stores there!

Transferring real life to the virtual world means that people also take their natural instincts there. At this moment – and probably for a very long time, if at all – we will not satisfy our physiological needs in virtual reality. However, others can and are already satisfied – e.g. the need to stand out in the crowd and the desire to have limited or unique things. NFT technology has provided the opportunity to secure uniqueness – making a digital item unique.

NFT token – secured with blockchain cryptography – it can be a kind of certificate of authenticity, the first unforgeable and truly unique. Digital reality allows you to easily assign it to the digital object it is intended to represent. That is why numerous well-known, prestigious brands appear in various metaverses – automotive, clothing, fashion, and even banks! If a well-known fashion brand sells one of its collections in the form of an NFT, it is possible to reproduce it digitally. Thus, avatars (characters) of metaverse users can be “clad” in Nike, Adidas shoes, Hilfiger clothing, and carry a handbag by their side. Louis Vuitton.  

Prestige hidden in the code. Global brands are buying up “land” in the metaverse

But that doesn’t mean anything, does it? Well-known brands may have simply capitalized on the NFT and metaverse craze when it lasted around 2021-2022. Meanwhile, the above-mentioned brands and many others are opening their “stationary” stores in various metaverses. Plots in digital metropolises have already been purchased by, among others, such giants as Adidas, Gucci, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, Burberry and Louis Vuitton. The usable space was also bought by the Korean technology titan Samsung. JP Morgan and HSBC banks also did this. Even NFTs of cars have already appeared in the metaverse and their digital equivalents – e.g. Acura, a premium brand owned by the Japanese Honda Motors. Other brands – like Ferrari and Lamborghini – have released or plan to release NFT collections. In the future, they will most likely also open their showrooms in the metaverse.

Certainly not all “virtual worlds” will be successful. Many of the key entities are still in the construction phase – like the famous work of Mark Zuckerberg. However, it can be noticed that this is not a passing fashion, but metaverse combined with VR, NFT tokens, cryptocurrencies, artificial intelligence and other technological innovations, have the potential to become part of the landscape of our future.