The price of virtual land in the metaverse is skyrocketing but is the market overheating?

euronews.com:

Welcome to the age of the digital land rush, where investors, brands and presumably very wealthy individuals have set their sights on owning virtual land in the metaverse.

The virtual land market in the “big four” metaverses - namely, Decentraland, Somnium Space, Cryptovoxels and Sandbox - topped €440 million in 2021, and that figure is projected to double in 2022.

The Sandbox metaverse is currently the land sale record holder, having sold a plot of land for €3.8 million in a single transaction last December.

But is the market overheating? Even some of the founders of these metaverses are cautioning against the inflated prices that plots of land in their virtual social worlds are fetching.

Speaking to Euronews Next, CEO and founder of Somnium Space, Artur Sychov, lamented the influx of financial speculation driving up prices in the ecosystem.

“There is a lot of hype and there are a lot of, unfortunately, players in the market which try to take advantage of people,” said Sychov.

“There's a lot of people who don't understand why they're buying and they're trying to speculate on it, which is an absolute no go and they should never do that”.

According to Sychov, investors buying up virtual land NFTs in order to eventually turn a profit on them as the prices climb go against the spirit of virtual social worlds, which should be about creators, building communities, sharing art and sharing experiences in virtual space.

“The bubble - and I have to say, the media is also complicit in it because the articles or the news videos, they don't go into depth and into details, right? They just mention the prices because it's a very catchy thing to mention and I understand,” he said.

“But it creates this kind of bubbly thing where people say, ‘Oh