Some of the world’s biggest companies are embracing the metaverse as digital assets go mainstream.

What’s the Metaverse: That’s probably a good place to start. The short definition: it’s a digital world rooted in virtual and augmented reality, kind of like a video game but one that we can navigate in a way that feels more real and immersive.

The hype: And the metaverse is all the rage, these days. Last week, a number of these Fortune 500 companies teased their plans to get in on the metaverse hype.

So we’ve put together a TL;DR on who said what:

• Facebook (Meta): Facebook, now Meta, hosted their Connect conference which featured an hour long keynote from Mark Zuckerberg who outlined the company’s plans to become a ‘metaverse’ company. Zuckerberg’s plan appears to be the most ambitious of the Fortune 500 CEOs and Meta plans to spend billions to build their digital world (hopefully this time with fewer people yelling at each other).
  
• Microsoft: The metaverse isn’t going to be all fun and games—and Microsoft is going to make sure of it! The Office giant announced that their Teams chat and conferencing tool will release a working metaverse prototype in the first half of 2022, Powerpoint and all.
  
• Nike: Sneaker heads take to the cloud. Last week, Nike filed a trademark for virtual goods and posted a job for a designer to create swoosh branded products for the metaverse.

Okay, so what does this all mean? In Zuck’s Connect keynote, he mentioned NFTs multiple times. That’s because NFTs, with their digitally native ownership, are expected to be the format that digital goods in the metaverse take.

• The key takeaway is that we’re really just getting started here. As the metaverse becomes more… real, expect NFTs to play a bigger role in our life.

How Stable are Stablecoins

I know you’ve been waiting for it! Of course, I’m taking about the US Treasury’s report on stablecoins that was released on Monday.

What’s a stablecoin? They’re cryptocurrencies that try to peg their value to an outside asset, like the US Dollar or gold, which stabilizes their price.

• The promise of stablecoins is that they let anyone receive or send payments without having to rely on a bank or worry about wild price fluctuations.
• Price stability is pretty important for any market that involves exchanging currency, so stablecoins play a critical role in the crypto world.

The problem: Analysts worry that stablecoins, which have limited regulatory oversight, do not own enough of the underlying assets they claim to be pegged to. This creates a risk that stablecoin providers could experience a good old-fashioned, “It’s A Wonderful Life” style bank run.

What’s in the report: The US Treasury has been monitoring the growing popularity of stablecoins and released their official guidance on how legislators and regulators should proceed.

• They call for new legislation that would require regulatory approval for stablecoin operators, insurance for issuers, and greater government oversight.

Zoom out: From a consumer perspective, it’ll probably be good to have a bit more oversight over the stablecoin space to ensure that operators above board. In the meantime, make sure to do your research!