Wen 丨 finance is unscrupulous, the author 丨 no rust bowl
If you want to ask the hottest investment outlet in 2021, the answer will definitely be "new energy", of course, the premise is that before the concept of "meta-universe" appeared.
Since March 2021, the first stock of the meta-universe concept Roblox landed on the New York Stock Exchange in the United States, the concept of meta-universe has begun to quietly sprout in the capital market, in May, Facebook changed its name in a high profile, and announced the news of the 5-year transformation into a meta-universe company, which is like a fire, igniting the attention of various circles to the meta-universe.
In the second half of 2021, Japanese social giant GREE announced that it will carry out meta-universe business, Nvidia appeared at the press conference for more than ten seconds of "digital double", and Microsoft announced the enterprise meta-universe solution at the Inspire Global Partner Conference.
In addition to the technology giants competing for layout, the figure of government departments also flashed in.
On May 18, the Ministry of Science, Technology, Information and Communications of the Republic of Korea initiated the establishment of the "Meta-Universe Alliance", in the name of building a national AR platform, including more than 200 local enterprises and organizations including Hyundai, SK, LG, and subsequently spent $20 million on the development of meta-universe platforms;
Two months later, Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry also issued the "Investigation Report on the Future Possibilities and Issues of the Virtual Space Industry", which checked and filled in the gaps, and pointed to the global meta-universe market;
Stimulated by multiple news, meta-universe-related concept stocks are also rising, and flush data show that since September 30, 2021, the meta-universe plate has risen as high as 72.63%. More companies have doubled their stock prices less than a week after rubbing on the meta-universe hotspot.
Behind the surging tide, looking at the beginning of the Year of the Tiger, what are the opportunities and values of the meta-universe track? This article will explain the following three dimensions:
1. When will the "ideal world" of the metacosm be realized?
2. What is the practical significance of the metaverse?
3. What are the short-term and long-term investment targets of meta-universe tracks?
Metaverse "Meet Forever"
"Please stop singing boring songs, the ideal world is hidden in your dreams." 」
- Gojo Ren, "The Ideal of the World"
In a sense, the lyrics of this rock band five-stripe lyrics, used to describe the future of the "far away" metaverse, is actually equally appropriate.
Although the core concept lacks a well-established definition, in the superficial consensus on the metacosm, we can still draw a picture of a virtual space built on top of traditional cyberspace, relying on cutting-edge digital technology and technology, closely related to the three-dimensional world, but independent of real life.
Broadly speaking, all virtual worlds are essentially a "metacosm", including games that can be played with VR helmets, VR house viewings in the real estate agency industry, and even the pictures you see when you wear 3D eyes in the movie theater, which is a very small "metacosm".
However, such a metacosm is obviously not a hot spot for investors to compete, and the "metaverse concept" that prys the attention of investors is more focused on the mapping between the real world and the digital world. As depicted in Avalanche and Ready Player One, it is a unique, massive virtual world that embraces everything.
However, such a world is still too far away from our present.
Moral and ethical controversies aside, from the technical dimension alone, the realization of the metaverse is also far away.
To be precise, the metacosm is not a technology, but a system built by the synthesis of almost all digital technologies. This also means that the construction of the metaverse can be said to be perfectly in line with the "bucket effect", and the six basic technologies of the architecture metacosm, any one of the shortcomings, will directly affect the performance of the metacosm in the market.
Take, for example, the footage of global players counterattacking the Planet of Death in the finale of Ready Player One, which is known as "Ten Thousand People Listening to the Bow and Arrow Rain" in the global dynamic interaction effect. Compared with the current bandwidth technology, the data transmission efficiency required to achieve hundreds of thousands of players fighting in a map at the same time is almost impossible to achieve at present.
A post published on CSDN, a professional IT community in China, also states:
With a 400,000-population Chibi war estimated, at least 10-40Tbps bandwidth single map server is needed to support so many people online in the virtual world at the same time, which means that the current server bandwidth needs to be increased by at least 100,000 times, according to Moore's Law estimates, it will take 34 years, considering that the performance of network servers in these twenty years has only increased by 2-5 times (Tencent has 1 million servers in 2020, 100T output bandwidth, an average of 100M per unit), and actually achieve such a scenario. It will take at least 50 years or more.
This is also a general consensus in the technical circles:
The relatively rough and simple metaverse world can be basically realized within 10 years;
A more vivid and detailed metaverse world takes 30 years to polish;
And the metaverse that investors imagine is technologically complete and has a cool experience, which cannot be achieved without 50 years.
Referring to the current complete Internet industry ecology, 50 years ago, in 1969, the world's first network was just born in the United States. We have reason to believe that in those days, even the most optimistic investors would not think that investing in the Internet was a good business.
From this point of view, when being brainwashed by the overwhelming meta-universe, you may wish to ask yourself first:
Are you really ready to hold meta-universe investment for 10, 20 or even 50 years?
Even if you really have the confidence to hold it for a long time, with reference to the rise and fall of Internet companies from 1969 to the present, how many of these enterprises that are now heavily positioned can really have the privilege of witnessing the outbreak of the meta-universe market decades later?
"Man and the World" does not require metacosm reconstruction
In addition to the technical problems, the contradictions at the conceptual level are also preventing the metaverse from becoming what people imagine.
As Playable Worlds CEO Ralph Coaster points out, it's not just the technical difficulties that plague the metaverse, it's also the business and social challenges that plague the development of the metaverse.
First of all, if there is no unified "metaverse protocol" like HTTP, the future "metacosm" will become an isolated existence, and users can only be limited to the "metacosm" developed by a commercial company, and cannot interact with other "metaverse" users.
However, there are indications that not everyone is expecting an "all-inclusive" metaverse platform.
In a conference call announcing Microsoft's acquisition of Activision Blizzard, Microsoft CEO Nadella mentioned, "There is no single centralized metaversmic platform, nor should it exist, and we must support many metacosmological platforms." ”
Nadella's point of view can be said to represent the mainstream attitude of the current big IP companies to a considerable extent.
Whether it is the Internet world or the metaverse world, it is essentially a neutral underlying framework built on digital and information technology, and in any world, high-quality content and IP are scarce resources. This also means that in the short term, it is more in line with the interests of enterprises than contributing IP, creating the prosperity of the metaverse world, and building its own "mini-metacosm".
In the metaverse world, there will be many stories and cases like this, different from the "self-contained world" expected by users, the initial metaverse is more of a projection of the real world.
Despite the expectation that the virtual world can make up for what is missing in the real world, the failure of blockchain financial decentralization has hinted at this:
Technology cannot change real-world rules, including financial, political, legal, and social relationships.
This is very obvious in the "metaverse society" that has been hyped before.
From a product level, although the metaverse expands the traditional social media scene, it does not solve the problems such as disinformation and hate speech faced by social media, and even continues to amplify the negative impact of these problems.
Previously, Horizon Worlds, a large-scale open virtual social world that Facebook had high hopes for, had been mired in the "sexual harassment" scandal since the public beta. Several female users have submitted reports to Meta that they have suffered varying degrees of harassment and verbal insults from unfamiliar players during the experience.
Coincidentally, in the related complaint report, a black player also said that during the experience, he clearly heard some people in the crowd making discriminatory remarks.
From this point of view, the metacosm cannot bring about the imaginary "cosmopolitan world".
From the perspective of the present, looking at the real value of the metacosm, compared with the flashy expression of "reconstructing the relationship between man and the world", it is better to say that the significance of the metacosm is to use this outlet to guide capital from virtual to real and pay attention to the development of digital technology.
Invest in the meta-universe, it is better to re-position "water sellers"
"Good technology, bad business" is the most common phrase that investors say when they mention the concept of "metaversity". A "third space" that distinguishes it from reality and the Internet, is the metacosm a "brave new world" for humanity, or is it just a digital Tower of Babel?
From the perspective of practice and landing, this question has been answered.
A basic conclusion is that unlike science fiction works and people's ideal "metaversic" diversified terminal applications, the game entertainment that is full of thorns and thorns often only looks like a "money scene", but the real money is the "water seller" in the key link of the industrial chain.
In other words, instead of investing in the content of the metaverse, it is better to reposition the "water seller".
A typical case is Meta and NVIDIA. The former is a technology giant that changed its name to "all in" the whole universe, but recently its stock price has plummeted, and its market value has fallen out of the top ten in the world. The latter relied on the underlying technology of the meta-universe - "computing power basic disk", and handed over a performance that exceeded expectations in the latest quarter.
Therefore, regardless of whether the meta-universe will be realized, the content and scenarios in the game world must have the support of the underlying technology, around the "meta-universe" industry chain, at present, there are two main lines of technology investment that are determined: one is the terminal hardware manufacturers close to the downstream, these low-key companies often hold the "key" to the meta-universe; the second is the upstream infrastructure, including back-end infrastructure (5G, cloud computing, etc.), the underlying architecture (blockchain, digital twins, etc.) and artificial intelligence and other "water sellers" who rely on technology output.
The first line is on the terminal hardware, vr/AR manufacturers that were not optimistic about it, relying on the "meta-universe" to finally fight a turnaround battle. As Zuckerberg mentioned in defining "Eight Fundamental Concepts of the Metaverse," the "Natural Interface." The immersive nature of the metaverse requires that it must provide three-dimensional information presentation and interaction schemes. Therefore, VR/AR manufacturers will usher in a positive and usher in a real sense of "VR big year". According to IDC, VR/AR terminal shipments will exceed 75 million units in 2024.
Foreign players have a first-mover advantage, Google, Sony and Meta in the early stage of the development of the VR industry to launch related products, from the "VR box" to the external headset and VR all-in-one machine, facing the wind, constantly trial and error.
On the other hand, in China, from Storm Technology to LeTV, have told the story of "VR", at present, there are many domestic VR players, distributed in various fields, such as Huawei, Shell to find a house, iQiyi, etc. have been involved, but the overall scale is not large.
Other technology players are hidden in foundry companies, such as Goertek shares, which do OEM work for head VR companies such as Oculus, and this "fruit chain giant" rides on the "east wind of the meta-universe", with a total market value of more than 150 billion.
In addition, around the "immersive experience", some optics, acoustic devices and sensor industries are also worth paying attention to. The same "fruit chain", such as the Hong Kong stock listed Sunny Optical Technology, the first half of 2021 revenue of nearly 20 billion yuan, net profit reached 2.7 billion yuan, chairman Ye Liaoning set the goal of "100 billion yuan" in 2022.
The second line is the infrastructure upstream of the metacosmity, including core technologies such as 5G, cloud computing, blockchain and artificial intelligence. In terms of artificial intelligence, we pay attention to the "Four Little Dragons of Computational Vision" (SenseTime, Megvii, Yuncong, yitu).
It is worth mentioning that the technology of the metaverse is not only about computer vision. For example, some investors have offered advice to iFLYTEK: "The metacosm should be a communication tool for users of different languages around the world, and iFLYTEK should make good use of its own entrance and platform for the advance layout of the metafile." "Therefore, in terms of intelligent voice technology, iFLYTEK, which has an entrance value, also has potential."
To some extent, we are only in the initial stage of the metaverse, or even in the embryonic stage, and what kind of changes will occur in the future is unknown. Some people think that the metacosm is a beautiful new world, such as Zuckerberg; but some people also think that the metacosm is extremely fragile, such as Zhou Hongyi, the founder of 360.
But what is certain is that the "metacosm" is a product of the digital economy, which means a reconstruction of productivity and production relations. As Zhang Chunxin, a scholar at Fudan University, mentioned: "At the theoretical level, in this economic system, the traditional economic dogma will be broken, and a more complete and advanced economic system needs to be established." ”