Virtual Reality Metaverse Altcoin Soars Over 24% in a Day As the Crypto Project Teases New Apple Vision Pro App

February 3, 2024 The Daily Hodl

Metaverse tech gets US greenlight to use speedier 6GHz frequency

October 20, 2023 Coin Telegraph

6ghz

The United States Federal Communications Commission made the decision amid a flurry of mixed reality devices that are hitting the market.

Low-power wearable technology, including virtual and augmented reality devices crucial to the metaverse, will be permitted to tap into the 6 GHz frequency band following a rule change from the United States communications regulator.

In an Oct. 19 press release, the Federal Communications Commission said it opened up the 6 GHz frequency band to “very low power devices” without needing a license, permitting a total of 850 megahertz of spectrum.

The band boasts faster speeds, more bandwidth and lower lag — or “latency” in technical terms.

“These rules will spur an eco-system of cutting-edge applications, including wearable technologies and augmented and virtual reality,” it said in a statement.

The 6 GHz band is, as the FCC claims, “important for next-generation Wi-Fi operations” and was first opened for use for some devices by the regulator in late 2020.

The Commission has adopted new rules to allow very low power devices to operate in the 6 GHz band alongside other Wi-Fi-enabled devices: https://t.co/HFaf2Hbh4M
— The FCC (@FCC) October 19, 2023

The FCC said its decision would “enrich consumer experiences and bolster the nation’s economy.”

Meta, Apple and Google have been working on AR or VR wearables — the latest to drop was Meta’s Quest 3 in early October, while Apple’s Vision Pro is expected to ship in early 2024.

Meta also released a second version of its Rayban-partnered AR glasses in September. According to a Bloomberg report at the time, Apple and Google are also working on AR-enabled glasses.

The three Big Tech players first petitioned the FCC in early 2020 to open up the frequency spectrum so they could use it for very low-power devices such as their wearables.

Uses for the 6GHz band highlighted by Bloomberg included connecting AR/VR devices to a smartphone or sharing navigation data with a vehicle.

In its statement, the FCC said the new rules were careful to limit permitted devices to very low power levels subject to other requirements that would allow their operation across the country while protecting licensed services that operate on the same band.

The 6 GHz band is also used by services that manage the U.S. electric grids, long-distance phone services, and backhaul — the links between core and subnetworks — hence the need for FCC oversight.

The regulator also proposed expanding the low-power devices to use the remaining 6 Ghz band and the ability to use higher power levels if they are geofenced to stop interference with licensed operations on the same band.

Magazine: Web3 Gamer: Apple to fix gaming? SEC hates Metaverse, Logan Paul trolled on Steam

Meta Q2 earnings: Reality Labs losses top $7.7B year to date

July 27, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Meta Q2 earnings: Reality Labs losses top .7B year to date

Meanwhile, Meta's metaverse-building business has racked up around $21 billion in losses since the start of 2022.

Meta's metaverse-related losses topped $3.74 billion over the second quarter with the Big Tech player spending $7.7 billion on its virtual reality business so far in 2023.

Its second-quarter 2023 results released on July 26 saw Meta report an 11% revenue gain compared to the same quarter last year, totaling $31.9 billion.

Its metaverse-focused Reality Labs revenue topped $276 million, its lowest in two years and a nearly 40% drop compared to Q2 2022.

*Meta's segment results in millions since Q2 2021 with* *added* *highlights on Reality Labs' Q2 2023 revenue and operating losses. Source: Meta*

On an earnings call, Meta's financial chief Susan Li said Reality Labs' revenue drop was due to lower sales of its Quest 2 virtual reality (VR) headset. The department's expenses were up 23% to $4.0 billion partly caused by a growth in staffing costs.

Reality Labs' operating losses are set to increase through 2023, Meta said. It cited VR-related product development efforts and further investments in its metaverse as the reason for the losses extending.

On the call, Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg said the firm is focusing on artificial intelligence "in the near term and the metaverse over the longer term."

He reiterated Meta is "fully committed" to its metaverse alongside its AI investments and said the two areas are "overlapping and complementary."

He added its AI model Llama is being used to build a number of products that will help users "create worlds and the avatars and objects that inhabit them as well" and said he would share more later in the year.

Meta's stock price jumped on the earnings and is up over 7% in after-hours trading to around $320 according to Google Finance data. Meta shares have gained nearly 140% year-to-date but are still off from their September 2021 all-time high of over $378.

*Meta's stock price spiked to over $320 in after-hours trading on July 26. Source: Google Finance*

Zuckerberg mentioned its July 6 launched platform Threads was “seeing more people coming back daily than I’d expected” and said Meta was focused firstly on Threads user retention, then growth and would later focus on monetizing the platform.

The comments come the same day as a July 26 report from data analytics firm Similarweb that claimed Threads users have declined 60% from launch.

Threads peaked at 49 million daily active users on July 7 but fell to 12.6 million daily active users by July 23 with users spending less than five minutes a day on the app over the past week.

Web3 Gamer: Apple to fix gaming? SEC hates Metaverse, Logan Paul trolled on Steam

‘Extended reality’ to create 860K jobs by 2025: EU Commission

July 12, 2023 Coin Telegraph

The European Commission has laid out its plans for becoming a “world leader” in Web 4.0 and the Metaverse.

The European Commission has tipped “extended reality” — technology that enables people to interact with virtual worlds — will create as many as 860,000 jobs in Europe by 2025.

Extended reality or XR is an umbrella term for immersive technologies including virtual reality, augmented reality and mixed reality, and is a “major technology enabler” for virtual worlds, said the Commission on July 11.

Europe throws its hat in the ring to become a world leader in Web 4.0 and virtual worlds.

The new internet will impact the way people live together, bringing many benefits.

And we need to have people at the centre and shape it according to our EU digital rights and principles. pic.twitter.com/rc0R3qUm0y
— European Commission (@EU_Commission) July 11, 2023

“The impact on employment is expected to be highly significant,” it said, noting that another 1.2 million to 2.4 million jobs would be directly or indirectly created in other sectors by 2025.

However, the Commission noted that today, most of the innovation around the Metaverse occurs in the United States, China and South Korea.

“Contrary to these countries, in the EU there are no tech giants to lead the investment in the development of virtual worlds over the next decade.”

Most of the AR/VR market activity in Europe focuses on gaming, media and entertainment, but there’s “much room” for other applications, including retail, healthcare, military and defense, and manufacturing.

The Commission noted that virtual worlds, enabled by these XR devices, are one of the technologies enabling the “next generation” of the world wide web — Web 4.0 — where physical and digital objects come together in virtual environments in real-time.

“We are at the onset of a major technological transition, Web 4.0. Virtual worlds are an important enabler of Web 4.0 that can significantly revolutionize the daily lives of people and open a wide range of opportunities in many business and industrial ecosystems,” it said.

Some examples included using virtual worlds to train surgeons for complex medical procedures, using “digital twins” to preserve cultural heritage buildings, or even, using 3D models to solve global warming.

In its working document submitted to the European Parliament, the Commission proposed its plan to become a “world leader” in Web 4.0 and the Metaverse.

Web 4.0 (aka the #Metaverse ) will allow an integration between digital and real objects and environments.

Europe has what it takes to lead this next technological transition — notably for the #industry.

Our strategyhttps://t.co/Bc39OYDkru pic.twitter.com/v4iGqtEkKw
— Thierry Breton (@ThierryBreton) July 11, 2023

“Today, Europe throws its hat in the ring to become a world leader in Web 4.0 and virtual worlds,” said Thierry Breton, the European Commissioner for Internal Market.

A total of 10 actions have been proposed by the Commission to achieve this, including attracting specialized virtual world talent to the region, creating regulatory sandboxes to test novel ideas and developing global standards for interoperable metaverses.

“Europe has what it takes to lead the next technological transition: innovative start-ups, rich creative content, and industrial applications, a strong role as a global standard-setter, and an innovation-friendly and predictable legal framework,” added Breton.

Web3 Gamer: Apple to fix gaming? SEC hates Metaverse, Logan Paul trolled on Steam

Samsung Is Preparing Its Own Metaverse Hardware in Partnership With Google and Qualcomm

February 4, 2023 Bitcoin.com

Meta CEO Zuckerberg steadfast on metaverse plans despite $13.7B setback

February 2, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Meta CEO Zuckerberg steadfast on metaverse plans despite .7B setback

Coin Telegraph

During a Q4 earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg said he saw no reason to deviate from the company’s long-term metaverse strategy.

Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the company has no plans to change its long-term strategy for the metaverse, despite operating losses for its Reality Labs business peaking in 2022.

Meta on Feb. 1 released earnings showing that Reality Labs lost $13.7 billion in 2022 — the largest ever yearly losses recorded for its metaverse-building division.

The fourth quarter was particularly costly, with the division losing nearly $4.3 billion, which was also the largest quarterly loss within the department since financials for the business were first published.

On a Feb. 1 earnings call, Zuckerberg was steadfast in the company’s metaverse strategy. Answering a question about how the firm’s efficiency applies to Reality Labs, he answered:

“None of the signals that I've seen so far suggest that we should shift the Reality Labs strategy long term.”

He added that later in 2023 the company would launch another “next generation consumer headset” following the October launch of its Quest Pro Virtual Reality (VR) headset.

*The Meta Quest Pro is the tech firm’s latest, and most expensive, VR headset offering. Source: Meta*

Meta’s chief financial officer, Susan Li, similarly doubled down on the Reality Labs business, echoing Zuckerberg’s statement from a Q3 earnings call that losses in the business would increase in 2023.

“We still expect our full-year Reality Labs losses to increase in 2023, and we're gonna continue to invest meaningfully in this area given the significant long-term opportunities that we see.”

Meta’s overall revenue for the fourth quarter was $32.1 billion, beating Wall Street expectations.

The better-than-expected revenue figures caused Meta’s stock price to jump after the bell, gaining nearly 19.5% in after-hours trading at the time of writing, according to Yahoo Finance.

NBA Extends Partnership With Meta to Bring Basketball Games to the Metaverse

January 26, 2023 Bitcoin.com

Nifty News: Porsche ends ‘low effort’ NFT mint early, Oreo dunks into the Metaverse and more

January 25, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Animoca Brands

Porsche’s first foray into NFTs appears to have flopped after recording underwhelming sales and was heavily criticized by the community.

Porsche criticized for 'low effort' NFTs, ends mint early

Car manufacturer Porsche had to cut short a nonfungible token (NFT) mint of its famous white 911 model only two days after the public mint started, saying its “holders have spoken.”

The Jan. 23 launch was seen by some as a huge flop for Porsche with just 2,040 of the 7,500 NFTs available having been sold at the time of writing.

Our holders have spoken. We’re going to cut our supply and stop the mint to move forward with creating the best experience for an exclusive community. More info in the next hours.
— PORSCHΞ (@eth_porsche) January 24, 2023

The mint was widely criticized by the crypto community for being “low effort,” “tone deaf” and overpriced. The price of the NFTs were set at 0.911 Ether (ETH) ($1,417).

Really sad. No community. No comms. No value. Glad our community hasn’t fallen for it. Big brands should take note. This is a valuable lesson for them. Extracting value not gonna cut it.
— Staś May (@haymaker_studio) January 24, 2023

Sales on secondary markets have been undercutting the live mint, with some selling for as little as 0.86 ETH.

After announcing it would cut the supply, Porsche clarified that minting would still be open until 11am UTC on Jan. 25. The collection recorded a surge of FOMO buying which temporarily drove up the floor price.

Crazy sequence of events w/ @eth_porsche

- Tweet on supply cut & stopping mint
- FP swells by .3 ETH
- Everyone realizes mint is still open
- Everyone mints #NFTs & sell immediately
- FP returns to mint price

Winners?

- Porsche for selling ~160 NFTs in <1 hour
- Shrewd traders pic.twitter.com/p1Kch1OrLH
— metaversatile.eth (@metaversatile_) January 24, 2023

Get Stuf’d: Oreo launches a Metaverse…and a really big cookie

Cookie company Oreo launched its own Metaverse, the OREOVERSE, an interactive digital world where cookie lovers can play cookie-themed games and enter into a sweepstake.

Introducing our newest Limited Edition OREO Cookie: The Most OREO OREO This OREO cookie features ‘Most Stuf’ creme with bits of OREO wafer.

With a cookie so meta, it’s only right that we’re dunking into the Metaverse with our very own OREOVERSE: https://t.co/v15kHRyxDu pic.twitter.com/yVfcFCDV7a
— OREO Cookie (@Oreo) January 24, 2023

The OREOVERSE is on desktop, mobile and in Meta’s Horizon Worlds, where users with a Meta Quest headset can enter the Metaverse and experience it in virtual reality (VR).

*A screenshot from the web-based version of Oreo’s new metaverse. Source:* *OREOVERSE*

Oreo enlisted the services of TV personality Martha Stewart along with her gardener and friend Ryan McCallister to endorse the Oreo-inspired digital world.

The grand prize for the sweepstake gives users the chance to win $50,000 amongst a range of smaller prizes.

The Metaverse announcement was paired with the unveiling of its latest limited-edition cookie called the “Most OREO OREO” which has a “Most Stuf” creme center — filled with bits of Oreo.

Nike kicks off NFT marketplace with Air Force 1’s

In its first collection of NFTs on its “.SWOOSH Studio” NFT marketplace, Nike is set to launch a NFT collection influenced by its iconic Air Force 1 sneakers following a community vote.

The Polygon (MATIC)-based NFTs will go live on Jan. 25 according to a Jan. 23 tweet by Jasmine Gao, Nike Virtual Studios’ senior product manager.

.SWOOSH Studio, Nike's home for virtual co-creation, launches this Wednesday 1/25

Last month, the .SWOOSH community voted on their favorite AF1 sneakers to influence the upcoming Our Force 1 collection journey.

Now, get ready to build it with us. pic.twitter.com/to3VyBgbSJ
— Jasminelil.SWOOSH (@jgao) January 24, 2023

Nike announced the upcoming NFT marketplace on Nov. 14 last year, which Nike Virtual Studios general manager Ron Faris claimed would help “onboard the next million” into the “wonderful world of web3 and digital assets.”

It aims to be a community-driven platform for Web3 digital art, with members given the chance to help co-create virtual creations with the global fashion brand through community challenges.

According to the Nov. 14 press release, members who win the challenge will also be able to earn royalties on the virtual product they help create.

Nike also suggested that digital wearables would eventually be usable in games and other “immersive experiences.”

Twitch co-founder's Fractal brings its games to Polygon

The gaming company Fractal will be expanding its F Studio product suite to the Polygon blockchain and is bringing along 30 Polygon gaming partners for the ride.

❄️ FRACTAL IS EXPANDING TO POLYGON ️@fractalwagmi mints, tournaments, marketplace, and studio are now available #onPolygon

Excited to announce the launch with Fractal’s 30 Polygon partners. Watch the video reveal pic.twitter.com/VuIRThkof5
— Polygon Gaming (@PolygonGaming) January 24, 2023

The partners include games such as Phantom Galaxies, Life Beyond, League of Kingdoms, Blast Royale and Sunflower Land.

*Fractal and Polygon launch partners. Source: Polygon Gaming.*

Fractal is an NFT gaming marketplace founded by Twitch co-founder Justin Kan and provides a launchpad for new projects as well as facilitating tournaments.

It also boasts a software development kit allowing developers to build in-game marketplaces where players are able to buy and sell NFTs in-game, rather than needing to go through Fractal’s marketplace.

The platform originally started on the Solana (SOL) network, but according to a Jan. 23 report by VentureBeat, Fractal is expanding over to Polygon due to its speed, scalability and ability to accelerate game development with the security of the Ethereum network.

Polygon Gaming will be making a strategic investment in Fractal for an as yet undisclosed amount according to the report, in an effort to deepen the partnership between the two firms.

More Nifty News:

An up-and-coming NFT racing game called PetaRush sold out all the NFTs available through both its whitelist and public sales. The game allows users to integrate some NFT collections from outside the games' ecosystem by pursuing partnerships that allow them to use the IP of other collections.

In a recent interview with Cointelegraph, the co-founder of the blockchain role-playing game Illuvium, Kieran Warwick, suggested casual gamers are “critical” to the success of blockchain games that utilize NFTs. Animoca Brands Chairman Yat Sui echoed the sentiment, claiming that all it would take is one good game to kick-start a blockchain gaming boom.

Nifty News: Trump NFTs surge 800%, Yuga Labs blacklists NFT exchanges, and more

January 20, 2023 Coin Telegraph

BAYC

Donald Trump’s NFT collection started out strong but then started looking lifeless up until a few days ago.

Trump NFTs daily sales surge by 800%

Former United States President Donald Trump’s nonfungible token (NFT) trading card collection has witnessed a massive resurgence in daily sales volume in recent days.

Compared to Jan. 17 sales volumes, Jan 18. and Jan. 19 saw spikes of 800% and 600% respectively, according to market metrics aggregator Cryptoslam.

Some pundits believe the renewed interest could be due to his imminent return to social media networks, following reports that the former president was seeking to rejoin Facebook and Twitter ahead of the 2024 presidential election campaign.

NFT Watch: Trump Digital Trading Cards see 88% increase in floor price in the past 24 hours following news of his plans to return to Twitter.

: https://t.co/P6W2uHx0Sr pic.twitter.com/IJogZR6yR4
— CoinGecko (@coingecko) January 19, 2023

The collection of 45,000 self-themed trading cards was launched on Dec. 15 and initially priced at $99 each.

Buyers of the collection were automatically entered into a sweepstake which included “1000s of prizes,” including one-on-one dinners, zoom calls and rounds of golf with the former President.

They quickly sold out and recorded daily sales volumes of over $3.5 million, but then plummeted to a baseline of around $26,000 by the end of 2022.

Yuga Labs blacklists NFT marketplaces

Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) creator Yuga Labs has blocked secondary trading of its “Sewer Pass” NFTs on marketplaces that do not fully support creator royalties.

Wow not only is Yuga Labs blacklisting Blur they have also blacklisted LooksRare, SudoSwap, and NFTX. Royalty war is heating up. https://t.co/afAnovk9ND pic.twitter.com/UEd3dtw0w4
— Simon Cousaert (@Merkle3_) January 18, 2023

The NFT project was first announced on Jan. 12 and became available for minting on Jan. 17.

Only Bored Ape Yacht Club or Mutant Ape Yacht Club holders are able to mint the Sewer Pass, which acts as an entry pass to its new skill-based NFT game, called Dookey Dash.

The sewer is open. Sewer Pass holders, go to https://t.co/ItKXBwrs9t to Dookey Dash as many times as you want until February 8th. pic.twitter.com/3h0qaKggKJ
— Bored Ape Yacht Club (@BoredApeYC) January 19, 2023

A royalty is a fee which is taken from the price of a sale and sent to the content creator, and Yuga Labs has been vocal about its opposition to broader shifts within the market to royalty-free marketplaces.

The Sewer Pass has seen a high volume of trades on secondary marketplaces, with a floor price of 1.81 ETH ($2,809) and sales volumes of 15,627 ETH ($24,267,411) according to data from NFT Price Floor.

Based on Yuga Labs’ 5% creator royalty fee, secondary sales for the collection have already netted them revenues of over $1.2 million.

Neopets raise $4 million to build metaverse

Virtual pet website Neopets — which was popular throughout the 2000s — has raised $4 million from the gaming and blockchain investors with plans to create its own metaverse.

Some of the companies providing the funding are venture capital firm Polygon Ventures, investment firms HaskKet Capital and IDG Capital, gaming company NetDragon Websoft and Avalanche's development fund Blizzard Avalanche Ecosystem Fund.

According to the announcement, ‘Neopets Metaverse’ will be a play-and-earn virtual pet game based on the original, and would allow players to “raise, care for, customize, and battle with their Neopets” on the blockchain.

In the announcement, HashKey Capital’s investment director Xao Xiao notes: “We believe that GameFi plays a crucial role in the larger metaverse narrative, serving as the interactive layer in the value chain and a key driver of traffic across web 2 and web 3.”

Neopets was founded in 1999, and the company is hopeful that Neopets Metaverse will bring “the magic of Neopets in a positively fresh light to old-time players, as well as attracting and nurturing a new generation of Neopians.”

The community has had an underwhelming response to the announcement, with some suggesting its previous effort at creating a Neopets metaverse had been a flop.

actually hilarious news on the migration considering being based on solana was one of their main selling points to avoid the environmental controversy. desperate rats trying to squeeze something out of a big fail
— no (@RED0KT0BERFEST) January 16, 2023

The company had initially launched an NFT collection using the Solana network on Nov. 12, 2012, which allegedly went so poorly it resulted in the hashtag #NoNeoNFT trending on Twitter.

Touch the metaverse, researchers say

A team of researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) have created a pair of haptic gloves which it believes can bring the sensation of touch to the metaverse.

The invention, called the HaptGlove, is an untethered and lightweight glove that will allow metaverse users to interact with virtual objects in a much more realistic fashion by conveying touch and grip.

*A professor who is working on the HaptGlove wearing it. Source: NUSnews.*

When users put on the HaptGlove, they are able to sense when their virtual avatar’s hand touches something, as well as tell how hard and what shape the object is as a result of the HaptGlove restricting the user’s finger positions.

NUS claims that the HaptGlove will also be useful in other areas, such as education and medicine, by allowing surgeons to prepare for surgeries in a “hyper-realistic environment” or giving students a hand-on learning experience.

While the concept of haptic gloves is not new, for example Meta is working on their own version of them, NUS claim that theirs is able to provide users with a much more realistic sense of touch compared to others that exist today.

Those working on metaverse games have suggested that as virtual reality is such an immature technology, it is difficult to incorporate it into metaverse products, so existing games like The Sandbox and Decentraland are yet to fully incorporate virtual reality clients.

More Nifty News:

On Jan. 18 NFT marketplace Rarible announced that it would be expanding its marketplace builder to include Polygon-based NFT collections. The builder will allow artists and projects to customize their own marketplace, with its CEO Alexei Falin believing that community marketplaces would become the future of NFT buying and selling.

Crypto exchange Binance announced on Jan. 19 that it would be tightening its rules for NFT listings, requiring sellers to complete Know Your Customer (KYC) verification and have at least two followers before listing on the platform. The firm plans to “periodically review” NFT listings that do not “meet its standards” and recommend them for delisting.

Car Manufacturer Maruti Suzuki Launches Metaverse Showroom Experience in India

January 3, 2023 Bitcoin.com

VR

Porsche criticized for 'low effort' NFTs, ends mint early

Get Stuf’d: Oreo launches a Metaverse…and a really big cookie

Nike kicks off NFT marketplace with Air Force 1’s

Twitch co-founder's Fractal brings its games to Polygon

More Nifty News:

Trump NFTs daily sales surge by 800%

Yuga Labs blacklists NFT marketplaces

Neopets raise $4 million to build metaverse

Touch the metaverse, researchers say

More Nifty News:

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