The Rising Star of the Metaverse: Looking Glass Labs completes a remarkable IPO on the NEO Exchange
The metaverse is the future and Looking Glass Labs (LGL), which specializes in non-fungible token (NFT) architecture, immersive extended reality (XR) metaverse design and virtual asset royalty streams, is poised to be the leader in the space.
LGL recently completed a remarkable initial public offering (IPO) on the NEO Exchange, becoming the first NFT-focused public company of its kind. In November, Looking Glass Labs closed a non-brokered private placement of 5 million units of the company. The units were offered at the price of CAD 0.50 each, generating CAD 2.5 million . The proceeds from the offering will be used as working capital for the digital company and the hold period for these securities will expire on March 11, 2022.
The Market Opportunity
The metaverse is a virtual ecosystem that combines virtual and augmented realities, animation, art, design and other technologies. Within a metaverse, users will be able to use their avatars to meet with friends, go shopping, work, play games and attend events. As a metaverse grows, it is possible that the entire social and economic structure of the real world can be simulated within it. Although the concept metaverse is still in its infancy, Emergen Research puts the global metaverse market size at $47.69 billion USD in 2020 and forecasts a CAGR of 43.3% by 2028.
The Non-Fungible Token (NFT) market is already worth more than $7 billion and has nowhere to go but up. As of October 30, 2021, there are roughly 200,000 active wallets participating in the NFT ecosystem, while Coinbase, one of the most popular exchanges for digital currency, has over 68 million verified users. Therefore, less than one percent of likely users are currently signed up, which means there is a lot of room to grow. For those who question whether NFTs will ever be adopted by the masses, note that artists like Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z, and Katy Perry have already embraced the future and launched NFTs, with others soon to follow. Investing in NFTs now is like putting your money in Bitcoin in 2010 and Ethereum in 2015.
As the overall topic of metaverses and specific metaverses themselves continue to emerge as immersive, open and creative digital environments, NFTs are proving increasingly relevant for metaverse-based use cases. In general, NFTs gain utility as they become integrated into a metaverse because NFTs are core to driving the metaverse experience. Therefore, the relationship between NFTs and metaverses is becoming stronger as both types of digital assets evolve and become increasingly deployed, both on an independent and dependent basis.
Looking Glass Labs: Leading the Way in NFT Architecture
With patent-pending technology and a security-first strategy, LGL is creating a hyper-realistic and secure virtual universe where businesses and people will be able to meet and do business in new ways. As such, LGL is positioned to be the go-to-agency for corporate solutions. Where Facebook is creating an easy-to-deploy MVP of the metaverse, Looking Glass Labs aspires to create a more advanced, 3D-ready, secure, and hyper-realistic metaverse that will become the infrastructure for the world’s most demanding organizations.
This is not to say that LGL will avoid consumer-facing opportunities. House of Kibaa (HoK), Looking Glass Labs’ wholly-owned subsidiary, has already generated CAD 7.5 million in revenues this year and its growth trajectory has been impressive to date. As LGL's flagship studio, HOK is working to build next-generation NFT collections and metaverses that are expected to seamlessly integrate HoK's 3D-ready NFTs.
Looking Glass Labs has also coined the term “utility NFT” (uNFT). A uNFT is an NFT that is 3D-ready and is also imbedded with functional attributes and lasting utility that will be additive to a metaverse and have Web 3.0 integrations.
Future Acquisitions
LGL conducts in-depth due diligence on a large number of potential acquisitions monthly, and considers three parameters before making an investment: the team, the technology, and the potential utility of the NFT or metaverse. This ensures that acquisitions and their future projects have passed the highest level of scrutiny—similar to that performed by Wall Street investors or private equity firms.
All of this together points to the fact that Looking Glass Labs is the rising star of the metaverse.
Disclaimer: The author was compensated to provide with his independent analysis of the company. The author ownes no shares nor plans to do so in the near future. The stock market is volatile and investors are advised to do their own research prior to making a decision
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