In the Sandbox virtual gaming world, a mega yacht has been sold for a whopping $650,000 (roughly Rs. 4.8 crore). Part of the metaverse, this virtual luxury ship is called the “Metaflower Super Mega Yacht”, featuring two helipads, hot tubs, and a DJ booth among other lavish facilities. With this purchase, the Metaflower yacht has become the most expensive non-fungible token (NFT) to have been sold in the Sandbox — a virtual world built on the Ethereum blockchain that allows players to gather digital collectibles, build their own games, and monitise their experiences.

Metaverse is a futuristic, three-dimensional version of the Internet that can potentially sustain a fully functional virtual universe.

At a time when the concept of metaverse is beginning to echo in gaming and crypto spaces, the news of this purchase was quick to surface on social media.

As per the images, this yacht is three-storeyed and white in colour. The payment of this NFT was done in 149 Ether tokens.

The pricey digital asset was released by Republic Realm, a metaverse developer. It was especially designed as part of a luxury NFT series, designed for The Sandbox. Private islands, speed boats as well as jet skis are other products that are on this series.

This is, however, not the first time a metaverse property has garnered a large amount of money in sales.

Earlier in November, a plot of land was sold for $2.43 million (roughly Rs. 18 crore) in Decentraland, which is also a decentralised, 3-dimensional virtual reality universe built on the Ethereum blockchain. People can buy pieces of land, estates, and wearables for their virtual avatars to customise their experience of existing in an alternate reality. All the buyable items are NFTs — digital collectibles with value.

Recently, another chunk of digital land was purchased for $2.3 million (roughly Rs. 17 crore) in the virtual gaming world of Axie Infinity.

Bloomberg Intelligence expects the market opportunity for the metaverse to reach $800 billion (roughly Rs. 59,58,719 crore) by 2024.

After Facebook was rebranded to “Meta” earlier this year, more tech giants like Microsoft, Nvidia Omniverse, and Roblox Metaverse are getting into the groove of the metaverse.