TIME has partnered with digital asset manager Galaxy Digital to launch the newly created TIME100 Companies Metaverse category, covering those building a virtual future.
TIME is taking up the metaverse in partnership with Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy, under which a new weekly TIME newsletter, ‘Into the Metaverse,’ will be published to “demystify the tremendous amount of transformation happening” into this virtual world.
Futhermore, TIME will also hold ETH on its balance sheet as part of this partnership. Galaxy Digital will pay for this deal in Ether, which as per the announcement, marks the first time a major media organization has accepted ETH as payment.
“Additionally, TIME will hold ETH on its balance sheet for the first time. This payment follows TIME beginning to accept cryptocurrency as a form of payment for digital subscriptions in April 2021 as the brand continues to expand into the cryptocurrency space.” the announcement read.
“Over the next decade, the metaverse will become an increasingly important part of the world economy; our physical and digital realities are already becoming hard to distinguish,” said Novogratz, CEO, and founder of Galaxy Digital.
TIME will also host additional educational resources on the topic via its new Learning page, slated to launch in December.
“Before we can build the metaverse, we need to define it, since, today, the word connotes vastly different things to different people,” said Sam Englebardt, general partner of Galaxy Interactive, an offering of Galaxy Digital.
“So, with our partners at TIME, our first objective is to create a shared lexicon and understanding of the idea and the opportunities that are emerging as we become an increasingly digital species and continue (and accelerate) our ongoing journey from the physical to the virtual world.”
While TIME magazine’s Ethereum holdings remain unprecedented in the world of media, several institutional investors are looking at the network as a viable investment asset. Currently, Ether also features on the balance sheets of Galaxy Digital, crypto-exchange Coinbase, and Hive Blockchain.
