Banking giant Citi thinks that more than 60% of the global population could be using the metaverse by 2030.
In a new report, the multinational financial institution says the metaverse’s total addressable market could grow to between $8 trillion and $13 trillion in the next eight years.
The global metaverse market size in 2021 was estimated to be around $38.85 billion, according to business data provider Statista.
Explains Citi,
“Today, the most popular way to experience the metaverse is via a video game played on a virtual reality (VR) headset. But in the report that follows, we discuss the possibility that the metaverse is moving towards becoming the next iteration of the internet, or Web3. This ‘Open Metaverse’ would be community-owned, community-governed, and a freely interoperable version that ensures privacy by design.
Users should increasingly be able to access a host of use cases, including commerce, art, media, advertising, healthcare, and social collaboration. A device-agnostic metaverse would be accessible via personal computers, game consoles, and smartphones, resulting in a large ecosystem.”
In order to scale up, however, the metaverse will need significant infrastructure investment, according to the banking giant.
“The content streaming environment of the metaverse will likely require a computational efficiency improvement of over 1,000x today’s levels. Investment will be needed in areas such as compute, storage, network infrastructure, consumer hardware, and game development platforms.”
Citi predicts that different forms of cryptocurrency will “dominate” the metaverse, but the financial institution also notes that crypto will likely have to coexist with fiat currencies, stablecoins and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).
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