Why a Virtual House Next to Snoop Dogg Sold for $450,000 in the Metaverse

Virtual Real Estate Boom in Sandbox

A player on the Sandbox platform spent $450,000 (≈287 000 CNY) to buy a virtual house next to Snoop Dogg, paying 45 万 USD for a 3×3 grid plot, equivalent to $20,000 per square centimeter, far exceeding average US home prices.

The Sandbox uses its native token “SAND” for land transactions; the Snoop‑adjacent plot cost 71 000 SAND. Rapid sales have seen 400 parcels snapped up in a minute, with prices ranging from a few thousand to hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Major investors such as SoftBank have poured $93 million into Sandbox, and the platform’s virtual real estate sales have reached $144 million, with one‑third of land still unsold.

Other brands, including Decentraland, have set record prices, e.g., a $2.43 million land sale, later surpassed by a $4.3 million purchase in Sandbox. Celebrities like Jay Chou and Lin Jun‑jie have also invested.

Analysts predict the total value of metaverse real estate could reach trillions of dollars, suggesting NFTs may one day enable ownership of entire countries.