JPMorgan Is The First Major Bank To Join The Metaverse

Shane Neagle, Editor In Chief at The Tokenist, explains why JPMorgan is the first major bank to join the metaverse.

Cryptocurrency has become somewhat inevitable in our world today. From being a relatively obscure proof of concept announced in 2008, it has become part and parcel of the global financial fabric.

Initially used by individuals to make purchases—such as the 10,000 BTC spent on a pizza—the industry continues to evolve and find use cases in almost every sector of the global economy. This evolution has led to its adoption by multinational corporations, who continue to find interesting uses for these digital assets.

The evolution in the crypto industry has led to the development of Decentralised Finance (DeFi), Non-fungible tokens (NFTs), Game-Fi and more recently, the Metaverse. Consequently, institutional adoption has continued apace.

Global Fintech giants PayPal and MasterCard are looking to integrate crypto payments into their list of products. Electric car company Tesla and Software giant Microstrategy purchased Bitcoin and hold it on their balance sheet, as seen in their recently released Q4 reports. Adidas and Nike have announced NFT collections with their sights on the virtual world, while Microsoft has ventured into the Metaverse through its acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

Conspicuously, the banking industry has also wanted a piece of the action as institutional adoption rallies. Initially, the consensus was that it would be adversely affected by the emergence of crypto. However, both industries seem to be coexisting just fine.

Several banks globally have announced their intentions to integrate crypto services into their offerings. This would allow their customers to easily access the best of both worlds on one platform.

However, the stakes have been raised even higher, as Wall Street banking giants JP Morgan recently announced joining the Metaverse. The move represents the first major bank to venture into this space.