Here’s your weekly metaverse and NFT news roundup

by James · February 24, 2023

The world’s largest asset manager, BlackRock, launched a metaverse ETF this week. Erik McGregor—LightRocket via Getty Images

Welcome to This week in the Metaverse, where Fortune rounding up the most interesting news in the NFT world, culture and metaverse. Email [email protected] with tips.

BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is allowing investors to take a dip into the world of metaverse investing with its new ETF.

Launched this week, the new iShares Future Metaverse Tech and Communications ETF brings together holdings from several public companies that are “expected to contribute to the metaverse in areas including virtual platforms, social media, games, 3D software, digital assets and virtual and extended reality”, according to the prospectus.

Some of the top holdings for the ETF, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange, are Meta, Nvidia and Apple. In particular, Microsoft shares have a lower weighting in the ETF, as the company has focused more on artificial intelligence recently.

When asked if ETFs would still find an audience during Crypto Winter, a BlackRock spokesperson directed me to a blog post by Jeff Spiegel, the head of US iShares Megatrend and International ETFs. In the post, Spiegel lists several metaverse-related achievements, such as the 1982 release of Microsoft Flight Simulatorthe first to show colorscapes, and points to Meta’s rebrand as proof that the metaverse can continue to evolve and grow.

“All told, year-over-year investments in the metaverse have grown from $1.5 billion in 2020 to $57 billion in 2021 and $120 billion in 2022,” Spiegel wrote. “A recent report from Citigroup claims that at this rate, the metaverse addressable market could reach $13 trillion by 2030.”

The ETF was up nearly 1% in late trading Thursday at $24.73, according to Bloomberg, up from its previous close of $24.49.

In other news:

A new NFT collection featuring never-before-seen photos of the late rapper Tupac Shakur launched on the NFT market MakersPlace this week. the collection, 2Pacalypse92: 17 shots, includes six photographs of the rapper at a performance at Prince’s Glam Slam in 1992, documenting a high point in his rise to fame. Apart from the pictures, taken by Kronick Magazine editor Lawrence “Loupy D” Dotson, each buyer will also receive an original negative.

Items recovered from Titanic may soon become part of your (NFT) collection. Three companies, RMS Titanic (RMST), Hong Kong-based Venture Smart Financial Holdingsand NFT company Artifact Labs teamed up to preserve 5,500 assets from the sunken ocean liner as NFTs from RMST, which has exclusive rights to recover items from the wreck. Buyers will also gain access to VIP events at exhibitions, seminars with historians and privileged access to unique experiences.

To celebrate 30 years since the release of Snow crashthe book by Neal Stephenson that first coined the word metaverse, auction house Sotheby’s announced a sale of physical and digital items related to the book. Among the items is a unique tachi sword inspired by the novel’s main character, which comes with its own unique digital copy as an NFT. It also includes Stephenson’s original manuscript for the book, which the auction house estimated would sell for between $40,000 and $60,000. The auction house is also selling 35mm slides that Stephenson and a collaborator used to present the project as a graphic novel, which come with their own NFTs.