Authored by a team of Citigroup analysts specializing in FinTech, future of finance and digital assets, the Metaverse and Money report claims that the Metaverse has the potential to grow beyond the narrow scope of a VR video game.
Instead, it could become the foundation for Web3, or Open Metaverse, which would be owned and governed by the community, ensuring privacy “by design”.
Citigroup expects the Metaverse economy to include everything from art and media to healthcare and social collaboration, placing the potential addressable market between $8 trillion and $13 trillion by the end of the decade.
On the other hand, the report suggests that scaling the Metaverse will present a technological challenge, with everything from consumer hardware to computational efficiency requiring considerable investment.
We also have "a lot to work out" when it comes to laws and regulations, the report says, suggesting that areas such as free speech, content moderation and privacy could "attract global regulators' scrutiny".
Web3 is also likely to evolve towards non-fiat money, including cryptocurrencies, stablecoins, CBDCs and in-game tokens. Considering that Citigroup expects the Metaverse to have up to five billion users, the forecast amounts to a vision of mass adoption for the entire crypto sector.