'Virtual' prime land and buildings in KL being sold like 'hot cakes'

KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 4): Prime land and buildings in Kuala Lumpur are being sold like “hot cakes”, but only in a “virtual realm.”

According to a report by The Edge Malaysia this week, all this is being done via Next Earth.

The report described the platform as “a blockchain-based metaverse community where you can buy and sell land parcels on a virtual Earth”.

And what is it all about? Next Earth’s developer says that “a truly decentralised virtual world and economy that is based on a copy of the real world has never been attempted. The goal of this project is to create a transparent virtual land platform, governed by a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO), which allows for the purchasing and trading of virtual land NFTs (non-fungible tokens) without a middleman.”

“One NFT will represent one hundred sq m of the Earth’s surface. Users can purchase the NFTs only via a crypto gateway in order to foster the broader adoption of cryptocurrency.”

It is therefore a “parallel earth and land on this earth is being traded as NFTs”.

Leo Tan, who is “in the property and construction industry” told the weekly that he purchased the Tun Razak Exchange land — minus the skyscraper — from the platform.

“I bought the TRX land, but I was not able to buy The Exchange 106 or the land it sits on as someone else had already purchased it,” Tan revealed.

“Each NFT is unique and it cannot be traded for each other. It can also be verified in terms of authenticity by referring to the blockchain ledger where it is held. It cannot be copied or forged,” explained ExaStrata Solutions Sdn Bhd CEO and chief real estate consultant Adzman Shah Mohd Ariffin.

“It also feeds the desire to create communities who find comfort in virtual interaction created by video game developers such as Minecraft, The Sims ... and turned into blockchain-driven games such as Axie Infinity, Battle Racers, The Sandbox, and others.

“This can also be acquiring imaginary land that exists in fictional worlds. Each item in the virtual world is tokenised and sold at a certain value based on bidding,” he added.

Read the full report in this week’s The Edge Malaysia

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