Joining Standard Chartered Bank, JPMorgan, and Fidelity Investments SE Asia largest bank DBS has bought virtual land in the metaverse. The world is Sandbox owned by Animoca Brands.

Banking in the metaverse with DBS and Animoca Sandbox

Transcript of Banking in the metaverse with DBS and Animoca Sandbox lecture video

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Hello, my name is Laurel Papworth, metaverse mentor, university lecturer, Chief Metaverse officer for Australia (interim). Today I want to talk about banks in the Metaverse just very quickly to give you the news is that alongside the Standard Chartered Bank, JPMorgan and Fidelity Investments, amongst other financial companies, the largest bank in Southeast Asia, DBS, has bought land in Sandbox and is now opening up a Metaverse division. I will read you a quote from the CEO of DBS Hong Kong.

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“The Metaverse presents exciting opportunities to redefine how we live, work and engage with each other. We have been getting our feet wet in this space and our very own young technologists have been given the freedom to develop experimental concepts in the Metaverse, the young ones.”

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It’s probably worth pointing out now that I was around and working in this space in 2014 when DBS opened up a virtual office, virtual bank in Second Life 2014 so these things come and they go, and I don’t have an issue with presenting things as new, but it’s kind of important to also recognise what has come before, whether it’s a 2D Isometric world or 3D virtual world, or augmented layers or augmented reality but I understand these things don’t come out of nowhere.

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Animoca Brands, who are the big company investing in the Metaverse and NFTs and crypto and all that kind of stuff at the moment, they own Sandbox.

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So that block of virtual land that DBS Bank has bought, they bought that from Animoca and Animoca raises funds occasionally. I don’t remember the exact numbers now, but I think True Global Adventures true Global Ventures should be called True Global Adventures. Maybe I just want a true global adventure. And Square Enix has invested in Animoca, Sandbox Square Enix, if you’re not sure, or haven’t come across them before. Have been around for decades and they have the Final Fantasy game franchise and also Kingdom Hearts, which was one of my favourite games, I don’t know, 15 years ago or something, maybe more.

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So we can see this kind of mash up happening of virtual land games, gamification of the companies behind them being interested, banking. Interesting to see where this goes I think.

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I have a course coming up in the first week of October on the Metaverse two day not a technical course, it’s a strategy course.

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And also I’m looking for sponsorship for these videos so I can keep doing them. I’ll see you in the next one. Thank you. Bye.