Is the Metaverse Dead? No, it Just Smells Funny - January 14, 2026

Is the Metaverse Dead? No, it Just Smells Funny - January 14, 2026

Is the metaverse dead? A deep dive into how cultural perceptions about real-estate and real-life housing affects how the idea of virtual land is perceived. (Featuring Decentraland.)

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2565701/episodes/18508630

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Summary:

Is the dream of the metaverse dead after the crypto crash? This episode argues it's not dead—it just "smells funny." We cut through the hype to examine why the vision of corporate-owned virtual worlds (like Meta's) failed, while a different, decentralized model quietly survives.

The key lies in a surprising place: real-world housing policy. The episode contrasts the Western view of a home as a speculative asset with the Asian model (in Japan and China) where housing is treated as a stable, depreciating place to live. This cultural difference directly explains the metaverse's flop: in regions where physical housing is accessible, there was little urgency to buy into risky virtual land schemes. The metaverse hype, fueled in the West by a generation feeling locked out of real estate, simply didn't resonate in Asia.

We use Decentraland as the prime case study. Unlike centralized corporate projects, it's a truly decentralized, community-governed platform that has outlasted the hype cycle. The episode explores why this model is so hard—governance is slow and complex, like running a digital government—but also why it's resilient. While corporate metaverses became ghost towns, Decentraland has hosted virtual music festivals, art residencies, and maintains a persistent, user-driven world.

The analysis broadens to crypto adoption itself, linking it to economic stability. Countries with hyperinflation see crypto as a vital tool, while in economically stable Japan, public interest remains low despite advanced regulation. This inversion is key: the West has high public crypto interest but low institutional trust, while Asia shows the opposite pattern.

The conclusion is cautiously optimistic. The core idea of a shared digital space isn't gone; it's maturing. The path forward isn't through corporate-owned walled gardens, but through neutral, decentralized platforms that users can truly trust and build upon. The metaverse's future may be less about speculative land grabs and more about practical utility—virtual events, digital storefronts, and creative collaboration—built on a foundation that doesn't disappear when the hype does.

Podcast: Teia Cafe | Host: Ryan | Episode: S2E9

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teia.cafe | Decentralized Radio
teia.art | Arts Collective on Tezos
teia.art/ryangtanaka | Ryan's Music and Artworks


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Transcript

ryangtanaka (teia.cafe): 0:37

Hello, everyone. This is Ryan from Teia Cafe. This is season two, episode Today we're going to be talking Is it dead? You know, it's been a while since, um, the hype was real in that area. It was a very strange time, to It was, uh, during Covid, uh, Many people were stuck indoors, wondering what to do. So, in previous episodes, I do happenings in the, twenty one crypto NFTs and the metaverse even to the point where that one around to it. Right? But now, um, yeah, it's a And, as you know, we probably the metaverse have crashed since But is it dead? And that is the question, because it's been long enough to the point where we can kind of start talking about like what is happening in that area and is it going to make a comeback at some point? So the example I'm going to use There are other projects out metaverse and trying to make it that you should come to us and Virtual plots of land run by a sort of a huge risk, right? Because you're putting all of Hopes and dreams and you're will be still around for like otherwise your investment, Your investment will just go to the people basically didn't the end of the day. And meta really is the biggest you know, like there are people the whole idea of virtual very, very popular. People do use it. there are games out there that a property they're not like the crypto ones are, but So it's not like the market is But why did it fail so versions even though. Right, the the argument was that, hey, this is just like being on Second Life or owning a plot on a, you know, like a virtual video game, but this is for real. it didn't last, you know? So we're gonna take a deeper and looking at it from even real between how real estate works in in virtual worlds. Uh, I think it's kind of I've been, like, really, really the political realm. If you look at my past history. So without further ado, let's Okay, so when talking about housing issues, I like to do a contrast between the Western mindset and the Asian mindset, particularly in Japan, just because I'm more familiar with it. But, uh, China, you can apply a lot of these ideas to China as well. But in the West, owning a home is typically considered a speculative asset. You know what I mean? Like, so when you buy a house, the expectation is that the value is going to grow over time. And this is a very cultural really the case in Japan or as just a place to live. And in many cases you will to either stay stable or even tying the idea of scarcity into, I've been an advocate for this because if you visited Japan or they have housing in abundance. rents are cheap. Buying a home is not that And they tend to overbuild rather than under build like we do here. And it does show in very in there, because the homelessness rents are low, like it's a When rents are cheap, you're less likely to be on the streets. So basically, when I see a lot especially in the West, talks don't seem to understand that house and turn a profit. like buying a place is just a And it's just like a product, You could even consider it I mean, it's not really a consumable, but, it's a depreciating asset. And particularly in China, that idea is very strongly enforced to the point where their home ownership rate is ninety percent plus. That is kind of insane. You know, in Japan it's about So sixty five percent of the ownership, either land or a Um, now in the US, they claim well, not falling behind. But I do think that a lot of exaggerated just because of the calculated here, and I won't go But I do believe that a lot of the numbers here are inflated and exaggerated just for political reasons. It doesn't look good, right? When, home buying a home is out But you see articles about it can you really trust the numbers administration right now? That's a whole nother question. And it's gotten to the point candidates win out big races. So New York mayor's race is one. Seattle's mayor race is another. Mamdani and, Wilson. Right. And they are renters. They have been renting apartments while they're running their campaign. You know, this is very unusual, especially in American politics, where you are kind of expected, almost expected to be a homeowner when you, uh, do a campaign. Right. Because that's the homeowners more of their, vested interests is why they show up typically, where the narrative may have very interesting time. At least politically anyway. But anyway, uh, that's almost idea is that, okay, in Asia, speaking, to get a home. The interesting thing is that that correlates pretty directly with the very low crypto adoption rates in those countries, at least on the retail level. The institutions of China and Japan, the governments, they are actually very interested in NFTs and crypto as a technology, and especially for Japan, where they were the ones that first hosted Mount Gox. If you remember, they were kind of ahead of the curve in terms of, adoption, especially institutional adoption. Like they already passed all the regulatory hurdles that we're still struggling with here in the West. but if you notice, the. Adoption by the general public is very, very low in those areas. In China, it's a different case because the state actually bans the usage of many crypto products. So we see this very, very different landscape between Asia and the West that we often don't get in the media because, it's just like there's a gap in terms of like how people view these technologies and how it's applied. And because it's really not a thing that people talk about in Asia, I'm not sure about China, but I know for sure that Japan, it's sort of, it's like they talk about it occasionally like it's there, but it but it's not really newsworthy like it is here. Good or bad. Right. Because we hear good things and the time as well. You know, and and part of it being active in the public sphere also includes scams as well. And so yeah, but it's very So the interesting thing about like if you're not familiar with plot is a form of NFT. It's just a different kind of It has a different function, or audio or other different essentially using the same a digital asset. And there's a lot of, uh, it got very, very popular during the last hype cycle, which is around twenty twenty one, mostly due to Decentraland. Decentraland has been around And it's a very interesting project because it is, I would probably say, still the only, metaverse project that is actually decentralized. Meta. Uh, there's a few others I can Meta. Somnium space. Uh, sandbox. Um, there's one on Tezos that, something like that. It didn't really last that long, But all of these, projects were corporate entity or an Right. So you're essentially putting this is going to be, you're be around, right? When when it's time to sell your And, uh, like I said, uh, most people didn't really buy into that. And it kind of came and went and oh, poor Facebook especially, you know, they went all in on it. And uh, right now they're and, you know, it's still there, but people aren't really taking it seriously. but the interesting thing that has, has happened in the last couple of months is that I've noticed that there were events still going on in Decentraland, and the interesting thing is that during the hype cycle, when everyone was talking about the metaverse, the media was all over it. You know, they were talking like logging in because I have a It's, uh, eleven sixty nine, in it's a little bit inactive right things mostly because there's And I've seen people put on Now, the advantage of having a virtual plot versus a real one is that you can get people overseas into it very easily, right? It's not a physical there's no to, quote, be somewhere, right? And a lot of people have been taking advantage of that, especially in other parts of the world. So, the residences I've seen, music, these music events, like art residencies, music events involve the metaverse because it was a great way for a lot of people all over the world to kind of get together and make art together. And I do think there's like a pretty strong case to be made that that something like that is valuable. But the issue really was down, comes down to control because Decentraland was, from the beginning conceptualized to be a decentralized platform. And if you go to their dot Decentraland for I think it You can check it out yourself, but you see that it's they have like proposals. They have a budget. They have to vote on everything. There's a quorum. You got to do committees. They have task forces. it's a very complex system that has been running for over a decade. And they do it best, and and alive, because it's not really company or corporation. It's really owned by the people But the challenge really is the Because if you are running a say the least. Right? And when it's actually decentralized and you have to vote on everything, it gets very complicated. It's a lot of work, just like And it's really like something most people don't want to deal with. And what happened during the companies cut a lot of corners just for metaverse stuff, but Right? Like FTX was the worst, right? That was the worst. But there's a lot of projects out there that are pretty much centralized. They're crypto only in But at the end of the day, it's And they're trying to basically, convince you to trust them, right. Uh, you know, there are some advantages of that, but it's just like, well, if you're gonna do a crypto thing and just give all your money to some company out there, like, what's the point, right? Like, why not just use the But that's a whole nother won't really get into. So anyway, part of the reason that popular in Asia has a lot like involvement with it. In Japan's case, I would say that it's like they regulated it in a reasonable way, and they made it available for the public to use. But people were just not think about Bitcoin, right, It's very expensive due to the And people say, well no thanks. You know, even the uh, metaverse stuff, you would think, because in Japan especially, owning virtual they're they're really high on the technological adoption rate. Right. Like a lot of people love tech willing to live in a virtual You know, they're very dedicated metaverse thing didn't really adoption rate to begin with, but see the need for it. and this is the other part that, talking about because nobody really wants to admit that the especially is in trouble, right? Crypto adoption rates tend to go extreme economic uncertainty. If you look at like Argentina, those countries, when their, mode, crypto adoption shot way and precious metals and all also part of that equation. But crypto also an advantage advantage crypto has is that you can transact with it, which is, kind of unfortunate because a lot of the major projects out there have kind of moved away from that. Like you can't really use can't really use Ethereum to use Right? Because, it's too unstable. But also the gas fees just make Right? If you're paying like five to Uh, it's just really not that useful for most people out there. Now, metaverse is interesting gas fees, at least relative to Metaverse plots tend to be very It runs into thousands of dollars at minimum, usually at least on the more popular places. It shouldn't be as much of a about with people with money. But at the same time, it's still If you're in Asia and you own a just buy that and take care of version of it. But it got really popular here because, there's this idea that reach for most people, So that really kind of fueled the hype behind it, the hype that really never existed in other parts of the world where housing, real life housing is, still available. So that's kind of the gist of going forward, it'll be because as mentioned earlier, in tends to be very low. But the interest among governments and public sector people, tend to be higher because they see the potential uses for this technology, especially using the blockchain, because in a lot of ways, the blockchain and the government has sort of a synergy going naturally just because in theory, democratic governments are supposed to be decentralized, right? So in the US, we have the reverse situation where public adoption tends to be very high, but institutional adoption very low. mostly because we're kind of concentration of power and at an all time high. So we're living in sort of like these things, are gonna play out guess, so to speak. But among all of that, the still stands out as an is actually decentralized. So if you're really a crypto, if that crypto represents, it somewhere, because it's a an actually working as intended, know, very obscure, the usage But to be honest, like even during the hype cycle, the usage was really low too I've seen all these media articles posting about how metaverse is the greatest thing to ever happen, and I would log on and there'll be nobody there, you know, with one exception. One exception. There were hundreds and hundreds playing at the virtual casinos. I don't know if they're still They might be, um, and playing play to earn games in one of their, uh, quote, playground, playground area. So. So, yeah. So maybe, uh, I've always felt lot of potential if they could transactional parts of it. Because there everyone was kind of taken by surprise by the sudden influx of users, Or at least interest. And they're scrambling to kind of like, Adapt to the new markets, but because actual decentralization is very slow, right? Like the government moves slow because you have to vote on everything. And Decentraland was no But at the same time, they've been still doing updates all these years. And then maybe, the next cycle, they might be a little bit more ready. Like, you can buy and sell but in the future, we would hope of legitimacy, because that is really trade on these places, And if you could trade NFTs for storefront for a lot of artists, you know, just posting an ad on Right. Like it's it's I don't know how It's like the online presence digital space is really not that Right? All you can really, if you want to get the word out on certain things, the only thing you can really do is post on social media, maybe make go on YouTube, hope you go viral or buy an ad, right? Most people don't have access to that kind of money, because even ads you need to spend a lot to like just get a little bit of traction, right? Like the algorithms haven't, worse in recent years. And there's a lot of, I don't the whole ad model. So the metaverse was supposed to people a different experience. You can walk around, you can Browse. If you're a storefront owner, you can, like set the environment up in a certain way that you think people will be appealing. And you don't have to buy real It can be your cool 3D website, But the path of getting there is And and it does require a level neutral because people did not any of those companies, like their, future on there. But Decentraland is a different story because even companies, even Japanese corporations, have an online presence there, and it's kind of neat to look around just if you haven't been there in a while, just go to Decentraland. Um, you do need like a computer just go ahead and log in. Even as a guest, just walk around and it's pretty obvious what's going on because no, like, you just see random people making random things as, as random, you know, like like the real world. And it's kind of fun, just like walking around and seeing what people are making because it's, uh, you know, it's all up to to them. It's not there's no company dictating everything that they're doing. So, yeah, you know, there's about, like, how this technology And it may have been long We'll see. But we have been long enough where people forget and maybe they're willing to give it another try. okay. So I hope you found that And, uh. Yeah. See you in the next one. Take care.