Another block of virtual land has sold for an eye-watering amount, with a digital investor paying $4.3 million for an allotment in The Sandbox metaverse.
According to its website, The Sandbox is a “virtual metaverse where players can play, build, own and monetise their virtual experience”.
Republic Realm, which describes itself as “one of the most active investors in and developers of the metaverse real estate ecosystem”, bought the land from Atari SA.
According to Markets Insider, the $4.3 million sale is a record in the metaverse and breaks the mark set just a week earlier when crypto investor Tokens.com bought a virtual block of land in Decentraland for $2.4 million.
The deals underscore an increasing uptake of a stake in the metaverse, which is an online space where 3D worlds can connect, and people, in the form of avatars, can do things like work, shop, play games and, yes, buy land.
Head of the real estate group at Republic Realm, Janine Yorio, said in a blog on the platform earlier this year, that virtual land was similar to domain names in that it trades for high prices because it is considered rare.
“So when a friend recently asked me, ‘Why would I pay real money for fake land?’ I explained that digital real estate is like a combination of NFT art and domain names,” Ms Yorio wrote.
“That’s because the marginal cost to produce a digital parcel of land is almost nothing, and its value is more closely related to its perceived scarcity than to its actual utility.”
Earlier this year Republic Real also reportedly purchased a non-fungible token or NFT for almost $1 million, representing a plot on Decentraland that comprised 259 parcels (about 16 acres) of digital land, according to Market Insider.
Last month a virtual mega yacht also sold on The Sandbox for a whopping $650,000.
