Cryptocurrency tycoons are entrusting their digital wealth in the metaverse to ‘gamefi’ services by technology firms

It is looking to provide services to a new legion of affluent players who are hatching big plans for virtual property empires worth millions of dollars.

The parent of The Sandbox, a blockchain gaming platform which is building an open metaverse for users to create their own virtual world and potentially profit from it, hopes digital wallets will help it expand its community to a billion users – a massive leap from the roughly half a million today.

The unicorn, valued at US$5 billion in its funding round this month, has been working with Hong Kong-based Hex Trust since November to design virtual asset wallets and custodial services for high-net-worth individuals.

As tycoons from New World Development’s chief executive Adrian Cheng Chi-kong to the American rapper Snoop Dogg plough money into the open metaverse, so more first-time cryptocurrency asset owners have been taking the plunge too. They are taking advantage of the growing stock of in-game assets such as virtual pavilions, or VIP concert tickets minted in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).