After reports of banks like JP Morgan opening their ‘lounge’ in the metaverse, Standard Chartered (Hong Kong) has become the latest entrant in The Sandbox metaverse’s Mega City district.
One of the leading banks of the world, Standard Chartered is a bank that serves in 150 markets, 776 branches globally and has 85,000 employees as per its website. Standard Chartered Group’s SC Ventures is leading the initiative. It is the groups’ fintech investment, and ventures.
On Tuesday the bank announced that its subsidiary in Hong Kong was partnering with The Sandbox. Sandbox is a blockchain virtual gaming platform, and extremely popular among the crypto community. The aim of this collaboration is to “create [a] metaverse experience.”
The bank mentioned that it became the first bank to buy virtual land at The Sandbox metaverse’s Mega City district. The district is inspired by Hong Kong talents. As per the announcement the Hong Kong subsidiary of the bank will engage with the tech community as well as the partners, staff, and clients to “explore co-creation opportunities in this new and exciting space.”
The bank wants new experience for its clients as it plans to bring local art and sport communities into the metaverse.
For the past few years, we have been building business models in crypto, digital assets and see the rise of the metaverse as a critical milestone in the Web3.0 evolution.
As per Citibank projections, the metaverse could grow upto 5 billion users by 2030 and that it is a $13 trillion opportunity. Other banks like Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs estimate it to be worth around $8 trillion in the future.