Krever metaversene regulatorisk intervensjon?

The rise of the metaverses

The development of metaverses is, as you can see, just a matter of time and we can notice more frequently that companies start using the power of virtual realities for their purpose.

Car manufacturers create their industrial metaverses and bring the manufacturing process to a brand new level, or they create establishing centers, in which they demonstrate cars and provide their clients with necessary consultations.

Sportswear brands, in turn, have found virtual worlds as a nice marketing platform, at which they can share their goods and attract people to their clothes in real life even more effectively. However, not everyone looks at metaverses this way. The research has shown that about 40% of people who visited the metaverse do not believe in commercial success and its marketing capabilities.

Despite virtual worlds developing, it also gives an opportunity to cyber criminals who can and will use new opportunities. Representatives of the International Police have already reported on this scenario of events, and they said that they would do everything possible to fight crime.

The recent research done by the company Elliptic Connect has shown that INTERPOL is not the only competent body that will pay attention to the world of the metaverse. Regulators will join the list of justice warriors.

Analysts of the famous bank Citibank state that, according to their research, the total value of the metaverse sector may reach the mark of $13,000,000,000,000. As it was said earlier, it attracts not just big financial resources and interesting investments but criminals who want to make money in unfair ways.

Crime in the metaverses

According to experts from Elliptic, cybercriminals will use current criminal methods, including fraud, scams, fishing, and hacker attacks. INTERPOL previously said that users have to be more careful because virtual meetings in the metaverses imply the possibility of closer communication between criminals and gaining trust.

All of this might help them to steal non-fungible tokens that can be used for avatars as clothes. However, impostors will be able to create other schemes and surprise users with methods of unfair earning.

Cybercriminals might come up with new ways of unfair earning. For example, hackers may enter the virtual world, steal personal data, copy the avatar’s parameters, and commit crimes, remaining unnoticed under their guise. The Chinese government has already prohibited the use of the neural network generation of images without watermarks or other noticeable marks.

The remarkable thing is that not just fraud schemes and hacker attacks can be done in virtual worlds but other things are beyond social norms of behavior. Experts from Elliptic have told about cases when users bullied other avatars and tried to commit sexual assault. The last one includes the recent story about the Korean who was sentenced to 4 years in prison for sexual harassment of young girls in the virtual world.

Such cases give us an answer to the question asked at the very beginning. There should be regulation in the metaverses and illegal and non-normal things must be prevented. Governing bodies now need to create special branches that will work on keeping order in virtual worlds.

The research was done by the analysts from Elliptic states that we will see a growth of crime in virtual worlds in 2023 that created the need to maintain law and order not only in the real world. Regulators will probably spend some resources to keep an eye on the metaverses soon.

They have been trying to regulate the crypto world for a few years. At first, it was with regular coins like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and others, after which they started developing regulations for NFT tokens. Regulation of the metaverse will be their next step. If they create a normative legal base that should be followed, it will be easier for law enforcement to do its job.

Regulation issues

Speaking about regulation and rule-making, we can't help but notice one of the most famous law cases in the crypto sector — the conflict between Ripple and the US Commission on Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The last ones filed a lawsuit against Ripple for carrying out an initial listing on the stock exchange (ICO), but they did it without preliminary preparation and signing of the necessary papers.

Brad Garlinghouse, who holds the position of the CEO at Ripple, thinks that the SEC should create a set of rules for the correct regulation of cryptocurrency assets because their native is way different from what we can see in the case of regular securities. The chairman of SEC Gary Gensler, in turn, states that crypto is a security and it does not need any special rules. The community frequently criticizes the US Commission on Securities and Exchange Commission for their laziness in this question and thinks that digital assets do need a special approach.

The UAE is moving toward cryptocurrencies

Continuing the topic of a special approach to regulation and supervision, it is worth remembering the creation of the first Dubai body that will be regulating crypto assets. Dubai Virtual Asset Regulatory Authority (VARA) will be following the people who work with digital assets in order to prevent them from violating laws and make sure that they pay the bills.

The United Arab Emirates also made steps to increase the level of security in metaverses at the end of the last year. This country is famous for respecting the world of the cryptocurrency industry and valuing it, so law enforcement can provide its services to citizens of Ajman not just in real life but in the metaverses.

Conclusion

There should be regulation of the metaverses. Virtual worlds might become dangerous places in all terms without some kind of supervision. At the moment, it is pretty difficult to imagine how the set of legal regulations in virtual worlds will be drawn up and how the rules for digital assets will be established. The reason for it is the diversity of the crypto industry.

The world of digital assets is not just a story about buying Bitcoin cheaper and selling it more expensive anymore. Nowadays, the crypto industry is also NFT collections, crypto gaming, virtual worlds, meeting opportunities and virtual universe dives, decentralized platforms, and many others.

Since then, regulators have asked questions “How to regulate and what norms should be introduced?”, “Do digital assets actually need special rules, or can just be considered as regular securities?”.

The crypto industry is developing pretty rapidly in all directions. Regulators will have to take fight and stand against law violators. However, it is unlikely that we will see an accurate set of rules for various sectors of cryptography, however, the battle between regulators and criminals will be eternal.