Bob Iger, former CEO of Disney, hinted at the company's metaverse ambitions, predicting an "explosion" in the non-fungible token space (NFT).
Speaking to New York Times reporter Kara Swisher on the Sway podcast, Iger compared NFTs to the baseball cards he collected as a child.
"We forget, in our generation, that things don't have to be physical," he said. “They can be digital, and they have meaning for people. And as long as this meaning can be essentially substantiated in a blockchain, I think there will be an explosion of things created, exchanged, collected in NFT ”.
Iger pointed out that Disney has already set foot in the NFT space, noting that the company "has licensed some" of its IPs as NFTs; the company partnered with digital collectors platform Veve to launch NFT with popular Disney and Marvel characters.
“When you think of all the copyrights and trademarks, the characters Disney has, and the possibilities of NFT, are extraordinary,” Iger said.
Unsurprisingly, given Disney's take on its copyright, Iger was concerned about the level of intellectual property infringement in the NFT space. “I went to a platform called OpenSea, which is a platform for buying and trading NFTs,” said Iger, “And I was amazed at all the Disney stuff that was there, and most of it was pirated. Most of it was not created by people who had the right to create it ”.
Disney and the metaverse
Iger also hinted at his former employer's ambitions in the metaverse space, while warning of the risks of "toxic behavior" in the next generation internet.
"Enough has been said and criticized about toxic behavior in Internet 2.0 - Twitter, Facebook, and so on," Iger said, arguing that in the more "compelling and engaging" environment of the persistent virtual world of the metaverse, worse types of toxic behavior.
"I think something Disney will have to consider when talking about creating a metaverse for itself is moderation and behavior monitoring," Iger added, noting that she is "thinking of telling my kids that they should start creating technology tools to moderate behavior in Internet 3.0 ".
Despite his concerns about the risks posed by the metaverse, Iger is optimistic about its chances, arguing that the next generation of the Internet "will certainly be more convincing in experience, certainly more engaging, more dimensional."
"I don't think there will be a single metaverse," he added
“I'm talking about democratization. He will be missing. You can have an avatar, but it will go everywhere. And I think it will probably develop into something real as an experience ”.
In recent months, a long list of companies have invested in the metaverse. The gold rush probably began with the rebranding of Facebook (Facebook shares) to Meta, part of CEO Mark Zuckerberg's ambition to reposition the company as a "metaverse first" business.
Since then, Microsoft has framed its $ 69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard as an opportunity to develop "building blocks" for the metaverse, while everyone from Warner Music to Samsung has revealed plans for in-metaverse events. Even Walmart has filed metaverse-related trademark applications related to cryptocurrencies and NFTs.
