All empires have their reign—as well as their inevitable demise. Unfortunately for Facebook (or Meta), things aren't looking too good. Every day I see more and more people on my TikTok fyp complaining about their unnecessary changes to Instagram, as well as complaining about how inauthentic the entire platform feels, especially in comparison to TikTok.

“Authenticity is a collection of choices that we have to make every day. It's about the choice to show up and be real. The choice to be honest. The choice to let our true selves be seen.” —Brene Brown

While Meta has clearly contributed a lot of value in the world—and still continues to do so—one throughline for the company has been the fact that they've always tried to either buy out or copy the competition, but has often lacked the creativity to make its competition irrelevant. $SNAP became enemy #1 when they decided to turn down Meta's offer for purchase, but clearly, they were correct to do so. With TikTok now being the second most downloaded app in the app store, Meta is forced yet again to grapple with its inauthenticity and struggle to stay relevant. As someone once said, "Good Artists Copy; Great Artists Steal", and time has proven that Zuckerburg and FB are not great artists in technology, but instead good ones. And I'm sure people like the Winklevoss twins would argue Mark is really just a good stealer (lol).

"Zuckerberg has never received a signal from the marketplace that he should ever be more modest or change how he has always done things," Vaidhyanathan wrote last November, after the Meta rebranding. That signal is sounding now, loud and clear. (source)

More than anything, I believe Meta is paving the way for entirely new companies, with entirely new business models to dominate the metaverse, leaving Meta to be a relic in the past, but also as a stepping stone to the new future that we're all co-creating.

As you can see in the graph, $META hasn't been doing well since the start of this year. This corresponds with the rapidly changing public sentiment that FB/IG is out, and TikTok is in. I think it's extremely important to study behavior when it comes to social media companies, as it will always clue you in on what's to come if it's not being reflected in the stock price. I suggest the book Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman if you have not read it already!

The leaders of Dubai have decided that it's a smart strategy to go all-in on the metaverse with its recent launch of the Dubai Metaverse Strategy.

The overall thesis is that if they invest time/money/energy into building out the metaverse economy, they will become #1 in their region, as well as one of the top 10 in the world.

"His Highness Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed underscored the importance of consolidating Dubai’s status as a hub offering the most advanced ecosystem for the metaverse and as a frontrunner in adopting digital solutions globally, which reflects the ambitious vision of His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum for transforming the emirate into a global capital of advanced technologies, primarily artificial intelligence (AI) and Web3."

If you've ever been to Dubai or know anything about it, then you know that they invest heavily in being high-tech and new—with many of their projects not necessarily having real viability when it comes to legitimate & needed use. When it comes to the metaverse, hopefully, their thesis is correct, and they find a way to legitimize the metaverse not only for the MENA region but also for the rest of the world.

"The Dubai Metaverse Strategy supports the development of Web3 technology and its applications to create new governmental work models and development in vital sectors, including tourism, education, retail, remote work, healthcare, and the legal sector. The strategy also aims to develop global standards in building safe and secure platforms for users and develop metaverse infrastructure and regulations to accelerate the adoption of these technologies.

The strategy’s key pillars focus on extended reality (which blends the physical and virtual worlds), augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), mixed reality, and digital twins (a virtual representation of an object or system). The strategy aims at leveraging real-time data, using machine learning and IoT, and employing AI simulation and blockchain to enhance the human thinking processes."

Once the metaphorical cat was out of the bag when it came to the discovery of the internet, every industry on the face of the planet has been forced to adopt it... or die out. Based on the above excerpt, it's clear that Dubai believes that the metaverse will have the same effect on the industries of today, as well as industries that have yet to be seen.

While it's been a struggle for AR/VR to get fully adopted, maybe we were just too early, and there wasn't the proper infrastructure to do so. With Dubai releasing its metaverse strategy, I think we'll start to see these technologies adopted more rapidly, especially as more metaverse experiences become available for people to partake in. The memo also stresses the importance of data, network, cloud, and edge computing as pillars of this metaverse strategy, which should likely see an increase in the value of companies that are specializing in these sectors.

By Dubai taking a stand a launching a legitimate metaverse strategy, I'm sure we'll start to see more places around the world do the same. It'll be exciting to see how this all unfolds, and I'll be sure to keep you updated!

One thing I love about the internet is that nothing can ever really go unnoticed—this is subsequently its downfall. That being said, "Paul Pelosi purchased between $1 million and $5 million worth of Nvidia stock NVDA, 1.31% on June 17."

What does this mean for $NVDA and chip manufacturers in general?

In this article it's made clear that this move by Mr. Pelosi was conveniently made prior to a meeting to discuss "a bipartisan bill to boost semiconductor manufacturing in the country. The bill aims to provide grants, tax credits and other incentives for companies to manufacture semiconductors in the United States."

While I'm no fan of insider trading, this news can surely help anyone who's thinking of buying $NVDA or other companies that manufacture semiconductors such as $QCOM $INTC $TXN $MU.

Either way, the bill that Mr. Pelosi was apparently privy to earlier than all of us were, is surely one to pay attention to!

"Aimed at realizing the full potential of a truly open metaverse, the Efinity parachain will deliver real decentralization, cross-chain compatibility, future-proof scalability and ease of upgrades.

Most importantly for earning micro income streams, the network has hyper-fast execution speeds for high-volume transactions with extremely low gas fees. It can mint up to 20 million NFTs per second, which will allow play-to-earn gaming and the broader metaverse to flourish."

If you want the opportunity to trade synthetic futures contracts tied to restricted assets, then check out Cypher!

"Cypher’s goal is to become an influential outpost for price discovery. Letting investors trade contracts that capture what they believe a soon-to-launch token is worth can help that token’s project better set launch price, they said."

Ever since $FB announced that they were changing their name to Meta, talk around the ‘metaverse’ has continued to heat up, with tokens & stocks related to the metaverse increasing in value as a result. It’s highly unlikely that one company will win out as the “creator of the metaverse,” and those steeped in web3 will be the first ones to tell you that (although $FB would love for that to be the case). There are ample opportunities to make a ton of money in the web3 space, and it’s not solely limited to buying a stock or crypto. It’s important to understand that in the metaverse there will be a need for all products that we have in our everyday lives; this includes clothing, real estate, cars, etc. One aspect of the metaverse that is already showing promise—and will continue to do so as it gets wider adoption—is digital real estate.

Real estate in its current form is a huge wealth creation vehicle and enables people & companies to purchase plots of land which they then rent out to people who need places to live and work. When applying this to virtual worlds, people will need plots of land on which to build virtual experiences, which can be purchased by people, DAOs, and companies that want to make a profit from owning this digital real estate.

Right now, the major players in this digital real estate space are Decentraland ($MANA.X), The Sandbox ($SAND), Axie Infinity ($AXS), Cryptovoxels, Somnium Space, Highstreet, and Superworld. For context, below are one-liners for each project, taken from their respective websites:

While all of this IS amazing, there’s going to be a need for a platform to aggregate these different virtual parcels for sale, and I’ve found the perfect company positioned to do just that, WeMeta.

What is WeMeta?

WeMeta has billed itself as the “Zillow of the metaverse.” What this means is that when you’re looking to buy a virtual parcel of land in the metaverse, rather than having to go to the different metaverses individually or getting lost in OpenSea trying to figure out what to buy, you’re able to go to one place and decide which parcel of land that you want to buy, as well as get a We-Estimate of what the value is of that parcel of land. As web3 grows, there will be an immense need for aggregators such as WeMeta to make purchasing items in the metaverse that much easier, by providing marketplaces for items by type. Think about it, we go to specific places for clothes and shoes, so why not for digital land parcels? Click here for a more detailed article on “Zillow for the Metaverse.”

These are exciting times for those who want financial freedom, and educating oneself on all the abundance of opportunities in web3 is the first step to manifesting that abundant future! Not sold yet? The two articles linked below are further proof that becoming a virtual landlord is a smart investment:

Are you bullish or bearish about the future of virtual real estate?

They swiped the best ENS name... beer.eth

"Today, Budweiser will release its first series of NFTs, dubbed Budverse Cans: Heritage Edition. The series will span 1,936 individual NFT collectibles, referencing the year the company first started releasing beer in cans. Each NFT will feature elements of classic photos, ads, and design documents charting the history of the brand."

Loved this trade because it really catapulted me into the world of DeFi. Through this trade I was able to learn how to stake $TIME.X within https://app.wonderland.money/#/stake

The notion of autonomous finance is a very interesting idea to explore. Now we have to rely on either self-directing our portfolios or handing our money over to financial advisors who figure out ways to grow our money, at some point soon everything will mostly be done by autonomous agents. Included below are some notable quotes from this article.

What are your thoughts on autonomous finance and how far off do you think we are from this being mainstream?

Virtual real estate is proving out to be a valuable investment given plots of land in $MANA.X & $AXS.X have sold for over $2 million!