Digital assets should be valued as ‘proper property’

Around 5 billion people are online and digitally-bound assets should get the same treatment as any other type of property, says Sandbox co-founder Sebastien Borget.

Digital assets such as cryptocurrencies and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) should be recognized as legitimate property, especially as more of the world’s population goes digital, argues the co-founder of The Sandbox.

Speaking to Cointelegraph’s editor-in-chief, Kristina Lucrezia Cornèr, during Blockchain Week Rome last week, Sebastien Borget said thso-called “digital natives” — those who grew up with and subsequently have an increased confidence with digital devices — are growing.

“More than half of the world’s population is now a digital native,” said Borget. The United Nations reported in December 2021 that almost two-thirds of the world’s population, nearly 5 billion people, were online.

“We have to build a future for them where if they spend more time and more money on digital assets, those should have value and should be recognized as proper property.”

He added the metaverse may give a new way for digital natives to connect and governments should “value the work [and] recognize the jobs” that happen in the space and start to treat “the digital economy as a real economy.”

Borget said while there are world events posing challenges to global stability such as the Russo-Ukrainian war and ever-increasing inflation, he believes the metaverse can be “a driving force for positive impact, social impact, more awareness and inclusivity.”

Hi from @wistaverse LAND in @TheSandboxGame.

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Borget believes lowering the barrier to creating digital content opens new opportunities for many and cryptocurrencies can provide access to payments in countries where “the banking system is maybe not as developed.”

Artificial intelligence is one of the “driving forces” that can empower creators and accelerate the idea-generating process, according to Borget.

“Everything that you have in mind now is a text prompt you can render and visualize. Before, it used to take days,” he said.

It’s not, however, at a level where it can produce content without “some human work” to get it up to scratch, Borget cautioned.

Borget said he hopes to create a platform where people can best reflect their inner talents and skills, which may best blossom in “the virtual world” such as helping in mental health.

“Being a platform that offers this possibility for people to find their own reason is great,” he added.