“Metaverse” loses in the final of the fight for the title “word of the year”. What’s next?

What beats “metaverse”?

The term “goblin mode” became the most popular in 2022 according to Oxford University. After representatives of Oxford University finished calculating votes in the competition of the most popular word (or expression), it turned out that “metaverse” stopped on the verge of victory.

The word lost leadership to the expression “goblin mode” that is interpreted as “defiance of all decencies”. Over 300,000 people took part in the online survey.

The term “goblin mode” went viral in February and expressed people’s reluctance to return to normal life after canceling the global coronavirus lockdown. It also implies that the person is extremely lazy, greedy and showing other negative qualities. And the person also normalizes their desire to defy some social standards and expectations.

Population of “metaverses”

Oxford University Press has recently shown what the rating list of “Word of the year in 2022” looks like. According to them, the usage of the term “metaverse” has increased 4 times in comparison with the previous year.

A big contribution was made by Meta which is actively promoting the conception of virtual worlds and created their own metaverse named Horizon Worlds. Besides, Facebook changed its name into Meta in October 2021, which affected the usage of the term “metaverse” online drastically.

Oxford University defines “metaverses” as a space of virtual reality with the effect of presence and enables users to interact with each other, using avatars.

Originally, the term was created by Neal Stephenson, an American writer. The “metaverses” were first mentioned in the book “Snow Crash”, which was published in 1992. Recently both the metaverse and cryptocurrency market have been going through hard times, however, they keep on developing — slowly but steadily. Virtual worlds already welcome companies that build meta-cities and meta-skyscrapers.

Besides, metaverses help people to convert some spheres of life, including marketing, fashion, education, manufacturing and even healthcare. One of the most recent and boldest examples is Renault and their creation of the first industrial metaverse in the world which will help them to improve work performance of the factories and optimize some processes, including logistics. According to analysts and other experts, this move will let them save lots of resources and over time — in several years it will save several hundreds millions dollars.

Mistrust to metaverse and cryptocurrency industries

It is remarkable that the terms “metaverse” and “goblin mode” were competing with each other in the final for the title “Word of 2022”, in terms of crypto-gaming they may overlap. According to various portals, the meraverse can lead to a so-called goblin mode which entails people unwillingness to leave their house and desire to spend time in virtual worlds.

The outcome of spending too much time in the world of videogames can lead to different consequences

In the international organization PC Gamer, devoted to computer gaming, an author published an article that encourages people to vote against metaverses despite the fact that it may function as a branch of the gaming sphere. According to him, the term “metaverse” is terrible and cannot bring anything good to gamers.

The world is still inhabited by lots of people who remain skeptical of not only the world of metaverses but of the cryptocurrency industry as a whole. There are sufficient reasons for the mistrust and we can understand it.

In the vast cryptocurrency world, we can come across countless scam schemes for a money grab because this sphere is not regulated in any way. Besides, the majority of cryptocurrency opponents reasonably consider it a pyramid scheme that is a great source of money for dishonest people.

In some cases it happens indeed. However, when it comes to Bitcoin and other large cryptocurrencies that can use financial tools for clever trading, it is a bit exaggerated. Nevertheless, taking into account the fact that creators of cryptocurrencies have huge money by means of major financial inflows from regular crypto-enthusiasts, to an extent, the cryptocurrency industry can really be called a pyramid.

As for the Web3 technology, crypto-gaming and metaverses, we can understand everything. People are used to computers being a conductor to the internet world and it must confine to entertainment or work but not transport your life into the virtual space.

Considering the fact that metaverses are seen as a digital space where you can earn huge money with advertising, it definitely makes sense, however, the adverts exist in real life absolutely everywhere.

Actions of cryptocurrency investors

Getting back to the cryptocurrency world, we should say that the recent FTX collapse helped investors to redirect their thinking to a different course. Starting from November 7, the majority of crypto-enthusiasts started to withdraw their funds from exchanges where they traded.

Now they opt for such alternatives as online wallets, hardware wallets or decentralized exchanges. To prove the point, we should take a look at the recent statement of the general director of the company Ledger that produces hardware for storing cryptocurrencies.

According to the director of Ledger, the company showed a week of the best sales in the history of existence of the organization. He did not reveal the numbers themselves, however, it was obvious that now people were going to avoid storing their funds on cryptocurrency exchanges.

Can we return trust to cryptocurrencies?

Changpeng Zhao, owner of Binance, is dealing with the mistrust of investors, trying to fight with it. He reported that the company has enough finances in reserve in case of emergency to save their clients from massive losses. To prove his words, Changpeng called the company Mazars that conducted an audit.

It is remarkable that the organization had audited the company of the former US president Donald Trump before, so they seem to deserve trust. The statement says that the reserve consists of 101% of the level of all assets stored on Binance.

Nevertheless, some words in Mazars’s statement alerted the users because they don’t trust the results and think that Binance acted dishonestly, telling about the desire to run an objective audit.

According to Mazars, all their actions while conducting the audit had been specified before, which questions objectivity and impartiality of the revision. For this reason, some cryptocurrency enthusiasts still do not trust the largest cryptocurrency exchange.