The Metaverse: Coming Soon To A Child Near You

Last week, The LEGO Group and Epic Games announced a partnership to build out a kid-friendly metaverse, one that would allow for children and families to engage in digital experiences in a safe way. We shouldn’t need to explain who The LEGO Group is, but for those who don’t know, Epic Games is the maker of one of the most popular games in the world, Fortnite.

This week, in a further commitment to the project, Epic Games announced that they have raised $2 billion from Sony and KIRKBI (the holding company behind The LEGO Group). This funding round gives Epic a valuation of $31.5 billion.

Why A Kid-Friendly Metaverse?

As we have seen with the success of Roblox (RBLX), the $25 billion behemoth that creates an online platform for children generally between the ages of six and fourteen, focusing on building games for children can be a lucrative business.

With all of its success though, Roblox has been accused of widespread pedophilia, child abuse, and illegal gambling, by short sellers and journalists. It makes sense then that Epic Games is strongly highlighting that their metaverse will focus on three components:

• Making children’s safety and well-being a priority

• Safeguarding children’s privacy

• Equipping children and adults with tools that give them control over their digital experience

But… Is There Crypto?

Interestingly, what is missing from all of these announcements is how this relates to crypto. Sure, saying metaverse is cool, but actually implementing it with a blockchain, NFTs, or a cryptoasset is a different story.Although this announcement wasn’t clear on the matter, Epic Games has discussed the metaverse and NFTs positively in the past.

The Competition:

This funding represents one of the largest investments to date into the metaverse and easily the largest focused directly on children, but there is still plenty of competition (and dollars) entering the scene:

• Niantic, the creator of Pokémon Go, raised $300 milllion last November to create a “real-world metaverse”

• Genies, which we covered two weeks ago, recently announced the raise of another $150 million

• Improbable also raised $150 million this week

• And of course, we can’t forget Meta, which has committed billions of dollars to becoming the overlords of not only the physical but also metaphysical world

Why This Matters:

If you’re like us, you are both excited and worried about the metaverse.

On one hand, we see some of the largest companies in the world investing directly into the metaverse, which can certainly fuel crypto adoption.

On the other, we have some of the largest companies in the world structuring how our children will potentially spend most of their waking hours.