Cryptocurrency is a confusing business with a language all its own, in part because it is a genuinely new way of doing business and also because it was created in large part by programmers and cryptographers, who should never be allowed to name anything regular people will use.
Cryptocurrencies have a lot of uses as an investment, as a currency for payments, as a store of value, as well as others. Like any investment, it’s vital to know what you’re talking about and more importantly, what the person trying to sell you something is really saying. And like any other field of finance, industry, art or basically every human endeavor, it has its own lingo, acronyms and definitions — and especially in matters of law and finance, definitions matter.
Read more: What’s a Metaverse, and Why is One Having a Fashion Show?
In this series of articles, we’re going to create a number of glossaries for various parts of the crypto industry, which we’ll combine into a larger reference tool. Today, we’re talking about the hottest, trendiest and most hyper-hyped part of the crypto world: The metaverse.
As imagined, the metaverse is an immersive, virtual reality world that goes far beyond blockchain. Some of the largest — like Roblox and Second Life — have existed for years. Others include Fortnite, a massively multiplayer online (MMO) playing game that is expanding into a full metaverse.
See also: Meta Opens Its Metaverse Platform to Payments, and It Doesn’t Come Cheap
And, of course, the 800 8,000-pound gorilla is Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which is pouring about $10 billion a year (and substantially more than that in stock price) into building a metaverse.
PYMNTS Cryptocurrency Glossary: The Basics
PYMNTS Cryptocurrency Glossary: Regulations, Legal and Crime
PYMNTS Cryptocurrency Glossary: Decentralized Finance or DeFi
