The metaverse will allow us to do things we cannot do in reality, much as video games do. We can destroy things and kill people without fear of punishment or retribution. We can be risqué and push cultural and societal norms beyond traditional boundaries, cloaked by anonymity and invincibility in the metaverse. We can fly, experiment with drugs and cheat on our partners.

The metaverse will, at times, be trippy and hallucinogenic. We can live our best, most ideal lives in a body-like avatar and quickly revert back to our real lives without changing physical locations. We can parachute in and out of this world in seconds, seamlessly interweaving multiple different realities into the natural rhythms of our lives.Janine Yorio is CEO of Everyrealm, a metaverse-focused innovation firm and investment fund.

Janine Yorio is CEO of Everyrealm, a metaverse-focused innovation firm and investment fund. Zach Hungate is director of gaming at Everyrealm, a metaverse innovation and investment company. This article is part of "Metaverse Week" and is the second part to a two-part series.

Crypto will become an invisible, infrastructure layer that facilitates micropayments and secondary sales, making it easier to move money from inside and outside metaverses and games. There will be many metaverse tokens, but there is likely to be one super currency that can be used in nearly all of them – likely a USD-pegged stablecoin.

Tokens are fundamental to a decentralized metaverse because they solve problems like fluctuating exchange rates between local currencies, political issues like sanctions and because they allow the exchange of goods to stay within the metaverse. Having to go transact outside of the metaverse or verify or regulate transactions through middlemen will reduce this world's economic capabilities.

Crypto-based economies will therefore create real jobs that pay well enough to supplement or even replace traditional sources of employment.

Just like there is no one internet, there is no single metaverse. Current platforms, such as Decentraland, have benefited from the recent wave of interest in metaverse technology, but Decentraland is more of a proof-of-concept of the addictive and superior experiences the metaverse has on offer. Shopping in Decentraland today is arguably worse than shopping on Amazon. Music concerts in Decentraland are arguably worse than they are on Zoom.

That is because Decentraland is mostly an attempt to create a digital twin of the real world, building spaces that simulate experiences we already have offline but in novel ways.

Decentraland’s vision for the metaverse is missing a few key elements: high quality, addictive video games and content; high quality visuals; strong communities; and activities that we cannot easily replicate in real life.

NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, will be important to the metaverse but not as important as they currently seem. In fact, the metaverse will give NFTs utility, not the other way around. Once mainstream, the metaverse’s economies will dwarf the size of the current $35 billion NFT market.

See also: Bringing NFTs to Life in the Metaverse

About 30 million people hold NFTs in their wallets today. However, more than 250 million people play video games and 4 billion people use social media – two experiences at the center of the metaverse. In terms of valuing the metaverse using NFTs, these tokens are to the metaverse as the tail is to the dog.

There are many innovations that must occur between now and when this seamless, mainstream version of the metaverse takes hold, and these are the areas we are focused on at Everyrealm.

See also: What Can You Actually Do in the Metaverse in 2022?