A lounge to serve customers, opened by JP Morgan Chase & Co., is gaining attention. What’s special about it? It exists in a virtual world. Enter Decentraland, and one is greeted by a picture of Jamie Dimon, the head of the bank and a friendly tiger on the loose. Walk up, and see a presentation on the crypto economy. To accompany his Metaverse debut, the bank released a paper on the opportunities he was exploring. It expects to offer services in this virtual world like the one we physically inhabit. This could facilitate cross-border payments, for example, a major highlight of crypto usage.
Enabled by blockchain technology, decentralized-finance offerings have attracted a lot of interest on Wall Street of late, and JP Morgan does well to mark its presence in a virtual setting developed on the same digital building blocks used for those has performed. As the divide between real and virtual becomes increasingly blurred, we can expect a fierce race between crypto tokens to achieve dominant-currency status in the virtual realms. One cannot expect a benign approach to such ambitions from central banks. Still, it could become the ultimate winner-takes-all Internet play.
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