Virtual land can be worth more than the real thing after plot sells for record $1.5M

A non-fungible token, or NFT, representing digital plots of land has sold for a record $1.5 million in the crypto-tamagotchi virtual ecosystem, Axie Infinity.

The platform offers NFTs for ‘Axies’, fantasy creatures that inhabit a player-controlled virtual realm called “Lunacia.”

On Feb. 8, a community member purchased nine digital land plots in Lunancia as one parcel for 888.25 Ether — worth more than $1.5 million at the time. Lunancia spans 90,601 plots of land in total, of which 19% are already player owned.

Is this real life?! Congrats to @Its_Falcon_Time and @seedphrase for making NFT History!9 Genesis plots. 888.25 ETH! $1,500,000The. Largest. NFT. Sale. EverWhy? pic.twitter.com/WcIbg6X1Z3

— Axie Infinity (@AxieInfinity) February 8, 2021

The sky high figure could buy substantial real estate holdings in the real world. For the same amount of money, or less, one could purchase one of these luxury ocean view condominiums in Singapore, an estate in Santa Barbara county, Los Angeles, or a 26-acre site for development in Louisiana.

The purchaser, known as ‘Flying Falcon’, explained why he purchased the nine genesis plots in a tweet, stating;

“We're witnessing a historic moment; the rise of digital nations with their own systems of clearly delineated, irrevocable property rights. Axie land has entertainment value, social value, and economic value in the form of future resource flows.”

The new digital landowner noted Axie’s impressive growth during 2020, including a 743% increase in NFT holders, a 608% rise in marketplace volume, and a more than 3,000% spike in active monthly users.

The sale also marked the one-week anniversary of Axie’s Ronin Mainnet launch — the platform’s sidechain built to ease the pressure of Ethereum network congestion and gas fees on players.

Axie Infinity also plans to debut an interactive system called ‘Project K’ which will allow players to explore, decorate, battle, and harvest resources on their virtual land.

On Feb. 9, major DEX SushiSwap added a liquidity pool for holders of Axie’s native token AXS. In the past 48 hours, Sushi reports the wETH/AXS pool has accrued over $1 million in liquidity.

Digital real estate economies are rapidly gaining in popularity, Decentraland is currently one of the most popular, ranked top in terms of all-time volume at $40 million. According to Nonfungible.com, the average price of a virtual land plot is around $343.