A 'Picks & Shovels' Strategy for Profiting from the Metaverse Gold Rush

It's 1850s California All Over Again

Blockchain tech and cryptographic tokens are enabling the most significant wealth transfer in the history of humankind.Ordinary investors with only a smidgeon of technical know-how have the opportunity to become squillionaires with a couple of hundred dollars, a little patience, and lots of luck.

But you don't have to guess the next token that moons 10,000x if you want to profit from the Internet's next stage of life: The metaverse, now speculated to be at least a .

Back when everyone was rushing to California in hopes of striking it rich — trying not to die of dysentery en route — those who truly cleaned up were selling picks and shovels to the frenzied masses stricken by gold fever.

This article dives deeper into a metaverse builder — one of the 3 front runners in the metaverse empire — taking the pick-and-shovel approach.

Its ecosystem provides multiple ways to profit, either as an active participant or as a passenger collecting semi-passive income. And like many things in life, it's easy if you know how …

A Diverse, VR-Equipped Metaverse Ecosystem

Tomorrow's metaverse will cater to a broad spectrum of individual interests. Compatible with mobile and desktop, and ready for VR, the  aims to please a massive audience with varying needs.

From shopping to gaming, live concerts, a VR roller coaster, and presentations inside an educational , there's plenty to do inside the VALT. Better still, its construction considers VR at every turn.

Imagine the RFOX multiverse as a spider. The VALT metaverse forms the body, while the various business ventures — DeFi, gaming, media, and more to come — act as legs.

Each RFOX venture can stand alone as a separate entity. But each business syncs up inside the VALT. This model gives each business operation a means to seamlessly cross-promote its products and services, primarily fueled by RFOX Media.

Before a recent rebrand, RFOX Media was MYMEDIA Digital, Myanmar's largest social platform of its kind, boasting over 13M Facebook followers.RFOX Media also houses a white-label platform that performs as a . Creators can run auctions and fixed-price sales and mint NFTs directly from the site. The platform also acts as a secondary marketplace offering automatic integration with OpenSea.

There's much more to come from RFOX Media's YouTube alternative, RFOX TV, including the ability to mint NFTs during live-streamed content.

A Multi-Token Environment

KOGs NFTs are collectibles that will feature prominently within the RFOX VALT. Think NFT vending machines inside the metaverse, along with head-to-head tournaments in which combatants pit their NFTs against each other and play for keeps.

The NFTs launched in August 2020. But it wasn't until November 2021 that players got to use their collections of Keys to Other Games inside the world's first mobile game to compute all of its logic — player turns, the score, etc. — on a distributed network.

The RFOX multiverse runs on $RFOX & $VFOX tokens, plus KOGs NFTs.

, a free, play-to-earn mobile title from RFOX Games, is now in its public beta phase, with 15 countries open at the time of writing. More games are in the pipeline, and the goal is to allow the same assets to have utility within multiple titles.

$RFOX token, now trading on multiple centralized and decentralized exchanges, acts as the currency for purchases inside the RFOX ecosystem, including RFOX VALT.

A recent listing with  gives traders, VALT visitors, and players of play-to-earn KOGs: SLAM! an easy method for getting in and out of $RFOX positions using cash. Such a fiat on- and offramp bodes well for the token's transactional volume, a key driver of listings on top-tier exchanges like Coinbase and Binance.

All transactions inside RFOX's upcoming metaverse will settle in $RFOX, no matter which currency initiates the purchase. You see, the initial VALT is a globally accessed virtual space.

But once the local layers see integration, we'll be able to go all Ready Player One and order food, from within the VALT, for delivery IRL. Those transactions also route through $RFOX, and holding $VFOX, of which only 21M will ever exist, gives you a nice piece of the action.

Semi-Passive Metaverse Rewards

RFOX's modus operandi is using technology to foster digital inclusion.And, time and time again, the ever-expanding team has proven itself to have token holders' best interests at heart. One example is the  that rewards set holders with generous $RFOX payouts.But profiting from the RFOX VALT metaverse, even while it's under construction, is as simple as staking $VFOX tokens on the  DeFi portal.

All transactions in the VALT course through $RFOX, a portion of which is reserved as a reward for holding $VFOX.

You see, whether it's $RFOX, another cryptographic token, or the local fiat, every purchase within RFOX VALT settles in $RFOX. The local layers will kick off in Southeast Asia, RFOX's target market.Whenever a purchase occurs in the VALT, 1% goes into a pool. Three-quarters of the overall collection is set aside for $VFOX holders, and the last 0.25% goes to the Quartermasters charged with keeping order within their respective territories.Sounds a lot like "passive" income, doesn't it? Well, so as not to be construed as a security, $RFOX doesn't just wander into $VFOX holders' wallets. Instead, holders must stake $VFOX inside a smart contract in exchange for $RFOX rewards.After all, we wouldn't want to spur the SEC into knocking the dust off its 1946 Howie Test and causing legal havoc, would we?Although $RFOX token began on the Ethereum network, staking and farming activities occur on the cost-effective Binance Smart Chain. Gas fees on the network typically hover around $1, which is in another league compared to Ethereum's triple digits.Yield farming is available to more advanced users with higher risk tolerance. Single-sided staking is open now, with $VFOX staking paying out ~14% in $RFOX and $RFOX staking paying out ~7% in $VFOX.

With only 100 publicly available plots — compared to thousands and thousands within The Sandbox and Decentraland — the unreal estate inside RFOX VALT is outrageously scarce.

Metaverse Tools for Partners

The metaverse-as-a-service approach has seen RFOX partner with recognizable organizations, including , , , and , with many more on the horizon.

RFOX offers tools for individuals and organizations to launch products and brands inside the metaverse.

Because space in the VALT is limited, RFOX must be very selective about who it chooses as a partner. And nobody gets in unless they can drive visitors to the VALT.In return, brands get a launchpad for creating innovative digital products. In the case of CoinGecko, ICON, and YGG, they receive a VR-enabled digital space to showcase their latest offerings and interact with their communities on a deeper level.The white-label NFT platform, recently used by Reebok to launch a limited collection of that sold out in less than five minutes, is another tool that facilitates quick entry into the metaverse.Undoubtedly, household brands will originate in the metaverse; it won't always be the other way around. Most tech-forward organizations are now tripping over themselves to get inside the metaverse, and RFOX is making it easy for them to do just that.

Wrapping Up

I'm not here to give you any financial advice because I'm neither qualified nor licensed to do so. However, it only takes a glance at CoinGecko to see that $MANA and $SAND, neither of which use VR, have both mooned well beyond their previous all-time highs.

On the other side of the token, $RFOX currently sits at 40% below its ATH from this past April. In other words, there's still plenty of room for growth.

Considering what the RFOX organization aims to accomplish — decoupling itself from crypto cycles by creating income-generating, metaverse-linked businesses — this pick-and-shovel play seems highly undervalued.2021 asked, "what is the metaverse?" But 2022 will see the metaverse flourish. What's your investment strategy?

*Disclaimer: At the time of writing, the author held ETH, RFOX, SAND, VFOX, and other digital assets.