(Bloomberg) — JPMorgan Chase & Co. has a lounge in the metaverse: Visitors are greeted by a digital portrait of Jamie Dimon and a roaming tiger. Walk upstairs and you’ll see an executive’s presentation on the crypto economy.
The lounge is located at the Metajuku mall in Decentraland, a browser-based metaverse backed by the Digital Currency Group. Onyx, JPMorgan’s blockchain unit formed in 2020, set up the lounge as it released a paper on how businesses can explore opportunities in the metaverse.
JPMorgan is the first Wall Street bank to launch a presence in the metaverse. The bank has been a proponent of blockchain technology and its use in financial transactions, as evidenced by its own JPM Coin. The metaverse effort represents a further step in its investment in building out infrastructure in the crypto and blockchain ecosystem.
In the paper, the bank said the success of the metaverse is dependent on having a “robust and flexible financial ecosystem” and its core competencies in cross-border payments, foreign exchange, financial assets creation, trading and safekeeping can play a “major role in the metaverse.”
Brands such as Samsung, and the Barbados embassy, have also opened locations in Decentraland. Users can enter as an avatar and buy land and other goods with Decentraland’s native currency MANA.
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