This article was written exclusively for Investing.com
- SAND: a top 50 token
- Ethereum meets the Metaverse
- Bullish action while Bitcoin and Ethereum correct lower
- Virtual worlds and NFTs
- In The Sandbox: Real estate and assets in another world
Such terms as the metaverse, NFTs, and even cryptocurrencies are new. None existed a little over a decade ago and certainly not when, in 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto presented a white paper introducing blockchain and Bitcoin.
It remains a mystery whether Nakamoto, who introduced that nascent technology to financial markets, is actually a person or a group of people. Bitcoin and blockchain are a chicken and egg enigma. Only he or they know if Bitcoin came first or if it was blockchain that gave birth to the world’s first cryptocurrency.
Fintech is the future, but it remains a topic of heated controversy. Cryptocurrencies challenge the status quo, including controlling the money supply by governments and the position of traditional banks and financial institutions. Most of the opponents come from the world of conventional finance, while supporters are those on technology’s cutting edge.
Bitcoin was the first, but as of Nov. 30, over 15,000 cryptocurrencies were floating around in cyberspace. One of the leading cryptos is The Sandbox (SAND), a token that reflects cryptos, the metaverse, and the growing NFT market. SAND began trading in August 2020, and has climbed to become the 39th leading cryptocurrency, worth more than 99.7% of most other cryptos.
SAND: a top 50 token
At $6.32 per token on Dec. 2, The Sandbox had a market cap of over $5.78 billion. SAND is a top-tier crypto, just one position behind Cosmos (ATOM) and one above Fantom (FTM).
A crypto regulatory sandbox is a “live-like” testing environment used to ensure regulatory compliance and security checks for financial operations, including cryptocurrencies and blockchain networks.
Ethereum meets the Metaverse
During August 2020, Binance Research described The Sandbox as a virtual world built on the Ethereum blockchain, where players build, own, and monetize their gaming experiences. The SAND token is an ERC-20 utility token used for value transfers, staking, and governance.
In early November, The Sandbox announced it had raised $93 million in its latest funding round, led by Softbank Group's (OTC:SFTBY) second capital fund, Vision Fund 2.
When it was first introduced, The Sandbox platform had three products: VoxEdit, a software that creates voxel ASSETS, which can become Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) and be imported to the Marketplace; the Marketplace, a decentralized business for trading in-game ASSETS created in VoxEdit; and Game Maker, a visual scripting toolbox that allows anyone to build 3D games for free. The gaming aspect embraces the Metaverse.
The Sandbox has a total SAND supply of three billion tokens. The Binance launchpad sale price was $0.008333 per SAND token.
Bullish SAND action while Bitcoin and Ethereum correct lower
Bitcoin and Ethereum tokens reached all-time highs on Nov. 10, then corrected lower. While the two leading tokens were moving lower, SAND tokens continued to push to their most recent all-time high.
Source: CoinMarketCap
The chart shows that SAND reached its latest high of $8.4022 per token on Nov. 24. On that day, Bitcoin was over $10,000 below its high, and Ethereum was down over $500 per token.
SAND took off on the upside in late October 2021, rising from below $1 per digital coin to new highs, eventually reaching over $8.40. On Dec. 2, SAND was sitting at the $6.32 level. The trend remains mostly higher despite the recent correction.
Virtual worlds and NFTs
The virtual world is a computer-simulated environment populated by many users who can create a personal avatar and simultaneously and independently explore, participate in activities and communicate with others.
Non-fungible tokens are unique and non-interchangeable units of data stored in a digital ledger. NFTs can be associated with easily reproducible items like photos, videos, audio, and other digital files as unique items and use blockchain technology to give the NFT public proof of ownership.
The success of The Sandbox is that participants can create digital assets or NFTs, upload them to the Marketplace, and integrate them into games with Game Maker.
In The Sandbox: Real estate and assets in another world
Within The Sandbox Metaverse, for example, a LAND is a digital piece of real estate that players can buy to build experiences on top of. Once a player owns a piece of LAND, it becomes real estate that they can populate with games and ASSETs. Multiple LANDs can combine into an ESTATE. Only 166,464 LANDs will ever be available, contained in a map that comprises The Sandbox Metaverse.
GEMs and CATALYSTs define the tier, scarcity, and attributes of ASSETs. CATALYST adds empty sockets to the NFTs that can be filled with GEMs. The higher the quality of the CATALYST, the more sockets an ASSET will have. An example is that a LAND owner could open a casino in the Metaverse, which could be highly profitable as gaming attracts more participants.
The monetization economics allows users to keep 95% of SAND revenue by selling ASSETs since users can create and sell ASSETs on the Marketplace as NFTs. Owning LAND creates the potential to rent or populate them with content to increase the LAND’s value. Revenues can occur from building and monetizing games using the Game Maker on the LANDs owned by players.
The Sandbox platform utilizes a fee capture model that funds and supports this ecosystem. The tokens have risen in value to the 39th leading crypto because SAND is a protocol that embraces the decentralized gaming virtual world where the metaverse and NFTs are an integral part of the future of the asset class and its technology.