What Kind of Apps Will Have A Standing in The Metaverse?

OnePad Official
8 min readJan 4, 2022

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“Metaverse” is a work in progress. However, since Mark Zuckerberg declared that his company would be driving the Metaverse and even renamed his company to reflect this new focus, a lot has been written about the Metaverse in general and many companies have shifted their focus to add some level of Metaverse activity to their roadmaps.

The fact that anyone wants to live a second life in a VR headset is highly skeptical. The idea of spending hours on end inside a VR world seems untenable. On the other hand, doing specific things for a dedicated time is highly plausible. Indeed, one segment of the Metaverse as envisioned by Zuckerberg has already proven to be a healthy one.

Gaming has become a big hit on Oculus Quest 2 as well as other VR headsets that support games. According to a report from Fortune Business Insights:

“The global virtual reality in gaming market is projected to grow from $7.92 billion in 2021 to $53.44 billion in 2028 at a CAGR of 31.4% in the forecast period.”

One other segment of high interest in VR is Fitness. Companies like Fit XR and Supernatural have had strong demand and customers willing to pay monthly subscription fees.

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As I survey the demand for VR headsets this holiday season, I am finding that people who are buying an Oculus Quest headset are not buying them for the main concept that Zuckerberg laid out in his Metaverse vision. That focuses on people meeting virtually, watching videos together, and even having meetings is only of mild interest to current VR headset buyers.

Last holiday season gaming was the driver for these VR headsets. This season we are seeing increased interest in VR exercise driving demand for these products. Together they are turning out to be the killer apps for VR that are driving the most interest.

This is not to say that Zuckerberg’s vision for creating virtual meeting rooms and hangouts will never take off. Connecting people is at the center of Facebook’s original mission and what he wants is to move their customers to the Metaverse and replicate the Facebook experience in a VR world.

However, even he sees the value of exercise to his Metaverse vision and recently bought Within, the creator of the Supernatural VR fitness app.

The other aspect of Zuckerberg’s Metaverse vision is the fact that people will be represented as an avatar. But even if the avatar gets a virtual replication of you personally, it is still an avatar. I am of the school of thought that it would be more realistic if my actual person could be transported to this virtual world allowing me to inhabit the Metaverse as myself.

Now I realize the technology is not here to beam myself into the Metaverse at will and given the physics around this concept, it will never be something we will ever do in the future.

Although the Metaverse is a work in progress, I think 2022 will be a big year for gaming and fitness in VR. I will be watching Meta’s developments as they try to build out their version of a connected Metaverse but will not be surprised if the two areas of gaming and exercise drive the VR headset growth in the new year.

The future of crypto is not gendered exclusive.

According to recent surveys, women are still half as likely to invest in cryptocurrencies and digital assets as men.

“I am used to being the only woman in the room,” Joni Pirovich told Cointelegraph over the phone. Pirovich is a blockchain and digital assets lawyer and has been involved in the crypto industry for years. She’s also a mom of two. “In some ways, it’s been a real struggle to have my voice heard, to be seen as a legitimate person at the table that has views worth listening to — let alone respecting or following.”

Her claim wasn’t shocking, since gender disparity in this industry isn’t exactly a new talking point. Back in August, CNBC released a survey that found that women are still less than half as likely to invest in cryptocurrencies than men, with 16% of men investing vs 7% of women.

These results echoed what Finder’s Crypto Report had claimed months earlier in June.It stated that 22% of men own at least one sort of cryptocurrency, while only 15% of women do.

The crypto industry sits at a crossroads between finance and technology, two sectors that have been traditionally dogged by gender disparity.

A 2021 report by Accenture and Girls Who Code found that the gender gap for women working in the tech sector has actually worsened since 1984, from 35% to 32%. It also found that half of the young women who go into tech drop out by the age of 35, giving credence to Pirovich’s unfavorable experiences working in the industry.

Meanwhile, an Oct. 2020 research report from Women in VC found that only 4.9% of United States-based VC partners are women. The data gets even more sobering when looking at how the numbers stack up against women from minority groups — only 0.2% of VC partners are Latinx women and 0.2% are black women.

Susan Banhegyi, author of Women in Crypto and founder of Crypto Women Global agreed that the issues women face in crypto are the same plaguing women across the whole scope of male-dominated industries. “Some crypto communities can be less than welcoming,” she told Cointelegraph, citing harassment and a lack of inclusion as some issues.

Emilie Wright is the founder of PULSE, a charity-focused and women-led NFT project. She said that in her experience, men in the industry tend to naturally make space for other men. “My experience, as a woman, is that it is harder to occupy that space, and if you push for it you are often met with questions about how deserving you are of it or your credibility,” she told Cointelegraph.

The adoption gap

Gendered obstacles don’t only come for women wanting to work in the crypto industry, but also for those looking to invest in it.

Previous discourse about the crypto gender tends to blame risk aversion. Crypto makes a notoriously volatile investment which is a pull factor for many investors chasing lucrative gains. Women stereotypically tend to be more conservative and risk-averse investors. But, perhaps this is an easy answer to a complicated question. Wright suggested that if risk aversion does exist among female investors, that’s only because it’s more “socially acceptable” for men to gamble and take risks.

“Maybe as women, there is an underlying pressure on us to be safe, secure, and stick to the known. For me, this risk is much more significantly acknowledged in the cryptocurrency space, and I see fewer women involved in cryptocurrency.” She added that when she first started investing in crypto, she would spend hours learning about the industry after working her usual nine-to-five job. She said, “I wonder if, as women with families, commitments, and busy lives, it makes it much more difficult to actually enter the space.”

Amy-Rose Goodey, the operations and membership manager at Blockchain Australia, has an alternative explanation. She said that women tend to shy away from investing because they aren’t confident in their understanding of how crypto works, and they don’t ask for help for fear of being ridiculed, stating:

“The statement ‘women are risk averse’ has continued to circulate as the primary reason women do not invest in crypto. In my experience, this is not the case. Women are very keen to invest but do not feel confident in going through the process to buy.”
“[Women] are more anxious about not knowing how to buy Bitcoin rather than losing the initial investment,” she said. “It appears to be more a question of confidence rather than risk aversion.”

Their theories are backed up by research, showing that an individual’s confidence is by far the most pervasive predictor of financial risk aversion — regardless of the individual’s actual financial literacy.

Goodey also said the crypto industry is already starting to make strides towards gender parity as it makes movements towards mainstream adoption:

“From where I am sitting, there is a growing number of women diving headfirst into crypto and investment on the whole. I do not see slowing down any time soon with a growing appetite for this asset class.”
This is true, the amount of women diving into the crypto space has skyrocketed this year as we inch closer towards mainstream adoption.

In a United Kingdom survey from January this year, Gemini found that women made up 41.6% of the 2,000 respondents who were current or previous crypto investors. It also found that 40% of the respondents who said they planned to invest in crypto were women.

Related: NFTs of empowered women aim to drive female engagement in crypto

In July, Robinhood COO Gretchen Howard claimed the number of women using the trading application had increased 369% year on year.

Looking at the historical data on gender disparity in crypto shows a pretty low benchmark for growth. In 2013, a survey on crypto forums across the internet found that out of the 1,000 people surveyed, 95.2% of “Bitcoin users” were male. A brokerage study from eToro in Feb. of this year found that 15% of its users were women, an increase from 10% the previous year.

The road to representation
As for the road to equal representation, Pirovich said that men need to be part of the solution. She said, “It’s about men supporting women to identify that you’re on an all-male panel. Just choose not to be a part of it until at least another woman is speaking and more equal representation or diverse representation is on that panel.”

Wright agreed, saying that “there are some amazing men who are supporting and empowering women in the right way, but there needs to be a lot more done.”

Banhegyi spoke to the importance of having gender parity in the workforce, stating, “The more women who work in this industry, the better, because a community is the foundation of any platform.”

Crypto has the potential to empower women and give them more control over their finances. And for many women, mainstream adoption has already started to chip away at some of the accessibility barriers that previously stood between them and potential gains.

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OnePad Official

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