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Metaverse
OpinionComment
Jill Baker
Jill Baker

The View | How Hong Kong can benefit from a rising Asia and growing metaverse

  • The metaverse is rich with opportunities for digital design and trade, while Asia already boasts high numbers of users and creators
  • As an innovation hub and key player in the Greater Bay Area, Hong Kong can lead the regional development of a tech-enabled creator economy

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Staff at the inaugural Digital Art Fair Asia in Hong Kong’s Central district take photos of a piece from artist Refik Anadol’s NFT Collection, on September 30, 2021. The fair showcased a number of works that were later converted into digital NFTs and auctioned online. Photo: May Tse
Jill Baker
Rising Asia is a massive source of future world GDP growth. The commercial potential of the metaverse is put at US$1 trillion annually. It follows that the metaverse will need content that caters to Asia’s needs and tastes.
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In Hong Kong, the metaverse represents a lucrative opportunity for building a tech-enabled creator economy. Content creation for the metaverse and technologies like blockchain and NFTs could be a source of new jobs in the area.

This could help invigorate the city’s hi-tech workforce and contribute to the innovation-driven economy of the Greater Bay Area, China’s plan for a regional innovation hub on the order of Silicon Valley.

The metaverse is an increasingly immersive evolution of the internet, made up of always-on digital worlds. Avatars – digital versions of ourselves which are our “presence” in these worlds – are infinitely customisable. The metaverse is also a space where people can interact and trade their assets using blockchains.

Accessing the metaverse through headsets like Oculus can feel pretty clunky. But, in the future, technology could well enable a sense of physical embodiment that rivals our experience of the real world.

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One aspect of the metaverse that has gained a lot of attention in the past year is the non-fungible token (NFT). NFTs are digital assets whose ownership and uniqueness are verified by blockchains. They can be owned and traded much like physical assets.
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