Exhibit A: Earth 2
Basically, you can buy small grid squares with the texture of google earth on them. They range from $0.1 to over $10. And you can also sell whatever you bought to others. This is a literary cryptocurrency scam and the cryptocurrency is virtual land. To withdraw real money, you need to input a lot of personal details, for a direct bank transfer, but even then, you may not get any money back or it will take weeks.
They said you can get resources from different squares, but the system is not done yet, it's in early access or w/e.
And they also claim, they will make a 1:1 copy of the earth in a virtual MMO, where you can use your virtual land. 1 to 1. Yeah.
They have already made a lot of money.
Exhibit B: Planet IX
They use NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) and mentioned bitcoin/cryptocurrency, but idk how it involves those exactly, they just say it to get the hype going imo.
The company behind it (Crowd1) basically runs a pyramid scheme (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0EjjArvzXA). And their founder (Jonas Werner) has been involved in several other scams in the past.
They also sell you virtual land. As far as I know, this project is still in the works though.
In both of these 2 scams, people are incited to join because of these things:
- Buy something that has major value irl: land
- Some lands are special, where landmarks are placed irl
- Buy it now, because people are gonna buy before you
- In game markets that seemingly give you the opportunity to make money
- Eventually you will see it in a 3D world and you can build on it
In addition Earth 2 has:
- Resources that makes specific land more valuable, so you gotta buy it now
In addition Planet IX has:
- The crypto hype train
- Loot boxes
- They claim to plant real trees if you play
Exhibit C: Mars Genesis
This is an even newer one, still not out as of making this post. But it will be out in a couple of hours, according to this:
Once it's out, you should be able to buy virtual land on virtual Mars, using crypto, ETH specifically.
Here is their Twitter, with a link to their discord on it:
https://twitter.com/marsgenesisnft
They seem to also leech off Elon Musk fans, constantly commenting on topics relevant to it:
Also, they tag Elon Musk for some reason too, like they are trying to hook him up on it too:
Note that in this one, you pay with crypto, so they are much more likely to get away with it easily.
And I expect that there will be a market too and maybe a promise for some usage of the virtual land in the future, like virtual buildings or something. But ofc I doubt they will ever get to that.
But there is not enough information atm.
Also here is a trailer:
Seems the main theme here is selling (virtual) land to make people feel like it's important and valuable.
If they had the moon, Luna would have loved it. She may have loved the Mars one too.
