HSBC Private Banking Enters The "Metaverse"

Tom Burroughes

8 April 2022

, it noted the exponential growth rates of users of Zoom, a popular two-way video system, and forecast a rapid rise in the use of virtual reality and augmented reality technologies and systems. Citing data from PwC, the report said that the VR/AR market is poised to boost the global economy by $476 billion in 2025, a 927 per cent rise from the $46.4 billion level seen in 2019. By 2030, the industry is slated to boost the global economy by $1.5 trillion. Overall, this constitutes a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37 per cent between 2019 and 2030. The augmented reality segment will account for the bulk of the contribution at 71 per cent while the remaining 29 per cent comes from virtual reality.

The DBS report said that the VR/AR industry is also a “major job creator,” and referred to PwC figures showing that job creation by the industry is expected to increase from 824,634 in 2019 to 23,360,639 by 2030, constituting a CAGR of 36 per cent. Geographically, the majority of job creation will take place in China (at 29 per cent) and the US (at 10 per cent) by 2030.

Interest in the metaverse concept has been jolted by news that social media giant Facebook is shifting to become a “metaverse company.”.Another force gaining attention is the phenomenon of bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, distributed ledger technology, and the non-fungible token (NFT). NFTs are unique, non-divisible, and non-interchangeable units of data stored on the blockchain.

At the same time, some of the more breathless enthusiasm for these ideas comes up against concerns about privacy, cybersecurity, and the robustness of such interconnected systems at a time when globalisation has been rattled by trade frictions with China and sanctions imposed on Russia for its invasion of Ukraine.

The infrastructure underpinning the metaverse uses data showing how users interact with their surroundings in fictional worlds, digital workplaces, virtual doctors’ appointments and elsewhere. Some corporate privacy lapses in recent years have centred on how companies exchange data with third parties, John Verdi, senior vice president of policy at the Future of Privacy Forum, a Washington think tank, was quoted saying by the Wall Street Journal on 4 January. He said that governments may need to pass new laws, or update guidance on existing statutes, such as the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation, once a metaverse-shaped data economy comes into focus.

In March, Mirae Asset Global Investments (Hong Kong) announced that it had launched new ETFs including the Metaverse Theme Active ETF.