A millennial NFT investor made nearly $100,000 in 6 months with a virtual car repair shop and a bank in a gaming metaverse that isn’t even live yet | Currency News | Financial and Business News

The metaverse has grown astronomically over the past few weeks, with people spending millions of dollars on virtual land. Investors like 37-year old Robert Doyle are already making money out of those assets.

Doyle owns a virtual car-repair shop and a bank in a metaverse that isn’t even fully live yet and he’s made almost $100,000 in six months, according to crypto wallets shown to Insider.

Polka City, where Doyle’s virtual property sits, is a metaverse gaming platform that launched in 2021. Players can buy non-fungible tokens that represent virtual taxis, gas stations, billboards and even motorcycles. They then earn weekly interest paid in the platform’s native token. 

According to the platform’s roadmap, users already own and trade digital assets. The game itself is due to launch soon. The roadmap describes it as the “GTA of Cryptocurrency”, in a nod to the cult “Grand Theft Auto” series of action games set in a virtual world. 

“I do think this could be a billion-dollar game. So if this game gets to a billion-dollar market cap, the price of the token could be, $30, $40, $50 – depending on what happens and these will pay out for quite some time going forward because the game hasn’t even launched yet,” Doyle told Insider. 

Doyle has accumulated 111,646 polca, each worth about $0.8719 on Friday, having gained almost 500% this year. The bulk of it has come from the car repair shop. Once the game launches, he said he will also get money from people using his car repair shop and will get 25% of polc loan fees from his virtual bank.  

The roadmap for the game shows a plan for multiple releases. The owners of virtual discos and art galleries in Polka City will be the next in line to be able to profit from their holdings by the end of this year, according to the plan, while others will profit from future releases. 

The NFTs that represent assets in the metaverse were not cheap. The car repair shop cost Doyle $23,000 and the bank cost $3,500, he said.  

“These (assets) are really for the end-game. So this will pay off for years to come. So it’s pretty incredible. Like I can pay for my mortgage, my medical, my car payments, my food for my family with just this one NFT – isn’t that crazy?” he said.

Metaverses have existed in various forms over the years. But Facebook’s decision in October to rebrand as Meta helped accelerate the boom in interest.

Two and a half years ago, Doyle was a real estate agent. Now, he makes a living from cryptocurrency and associated projects, nodes, staking and mining, he said. He also heads up a crypto research company that helps people generate passive income called Cryptonairz. 

Doyle warned that this investing does come with risks. 

“It does take some time to understand what you’re getting into. You need to look at the market cap, you need to look at the team, you need to look at the development. You need to look at the community,” he said.