Real estate fever has spilled over to the virtual world in South Korea as investors flocked to metaverse investment with a bet on their value inflation, stoking a new speculative concern.

According to OpenSea, the world’s largest peer-to-peer marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) on Tuesday, NFTs of The Sandbox, the virtual metaverse platform where players create games that can trade their virtual lands, ranked top by trading volume. Sale of The Sandbox’s NFTs amounted to around $74.3 million or 15,701 Ethereum (ETH) over the past seven days, translating into daily average of 10 billion won ($8.5 million) or more.

The price for a 1x1 virtual ‘land’ on The Sandbox has soared to 3 ETH from around $50 in the end of 2019. The Ethereum price on Tuesday was around $4,746.

About 160,000 people have bought a total of 70 percent of 160,000 lands in The Sandbox, according to sources. By nationality of the buyers, Americans topped the list and Koreans came second.

Last week, a land plot within the NFT-based game Axie Infinity sold for 550 ETH. The land is in the most valuable real estate on the play-to-earn (P2E) gaming platform. Canadian blockchain technology firm Tokens.com said last week that it paid $2.43 million to buy a virtual commercial land in Decentraland’s fashion district.

But some has warned that real estate investing in the metaverse is still highly risky, citing opaque profit structure and low liquidity. The value of virtual properties could drop to zero if the metaverse realm no longer attracts visitors.

By Hwang Soon-min and Choi Mira

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]