The Most Important Investment Trend of 2023

What’s old is what’s new again in 2023…meaning I see a big opportunity this year to turn over a new leaf and pursue potentially huge profits. 

I’m calling it The Year of Web3. 

This time a year ago, the idea of Web3 was the vaguest of unformed notions. Even today, no one is quite sure how best to define what Web3 is.  

My take: It’s the next iteration of the internet—an internet that ultimately will exist in 3D all around us, and which will integrate almost all aspects of daily life into a convenient, easy-to-access digital wallet that will hold everything from your cash and investments, to tokenized real estate properties, to health and identity records…to, well, everything.  

That might sound a tad fantastical, but some of the world’s biggest corporations are busy preparing for its arrival. For instance, Home Depot recently announced it has filed for crypto-related patents and trademarks. Among other things, the company has applied to trademark: 

1. Various virtual goods and services, including home improvement goods for use in virtual 3D worlds (also called the metaverse), as well as software to be used as vouchers that will be redeemable in both the virtual and real world.  

2. Virtual-assistant software. 

3. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs). 

4. The operation of a virtual store, where Home Depot will sell virtual and real-world goods. 

5. Software to visualize home improvement projects in augmented reality. 

6. A platform for users to create virtual home improvement projects for entertainment purposes. 

Also joining the game is brokerage giant Fidelity, which recently filed its own patent and trademark paperwork for Web3 products and services. 

Fidelity’s plan: To serve clients in a crypto-powered metaverse. The broker’s applications include patents/trademarks for: 

1. An NFT marketplace and a crypto-trading platform in the metaverse. 

2. Investment advice and financial planning in the metaverse.  

3. Information about investing in virtual real estate. 

4. Services in the metaverse tied to charitable fundraising, insurance, annuities, retirement planning, and stock-purchase plans. 

Fidelity isn’t clear if all of this will happen in a company-branded metaverse, or at a virtual Fidelity storefront inside other metaverses.  

Either way, the point here is simply that the calendar rolling over marks the continuation of a trend that started last year as companies such as McDonald’s, Walmart, JPMorgan, Gucci, Ralph Lauren, Gap, and so many others raced into Web3.  

They’re not focusing on the state of the crypto market at the moment. 

They’re all wisely looking ahead to the tidal wave of consumers that will be flooding into Web3 starting this year and progressing across the rest of the decade. 

In short, they’re getting out ahead of a curve that will redefine entertainment, sports, retail, finance, education, and social lives on a scale exponentially larger than what the current internet brought us over the last 20 years. 

I ask skeptical friends this question all the time: Knowing what you know today about the growth of the modern internet, would you go back to the 1990s and tell your skeptical, younger self to load up on Amazon, Google, Priceline.com, and other tech stocks? 

I cannot imagine anyone saying no. 

Yet so many people I chat with today are so down on crypto and refuse to buy in, despite how insanely cheap the crypto market is right now. (Small example: I own NFTs that, based on their income and price right now, are offering an annualized 15% return in what are effectively quarterly dividend payments.) 

My advice: Pay attention to the New Year’s greetings that Fidelity and Home Depot are sending. 

Their move into Web3 and the metaverse is their acknowledgement that our consumer world is in the midst of the next great metamorphosis. 

This is exactly why I have not lost a single moment’s sleep worried about deeply depressed prices for crypto and various NFTs I own. I just don’t care, because I know major global companies are telling me what the future is going to look like.  

And because I know that at one point a few decades back, Amazon.com was down more than 90% before the world realized that, yep, the internet is gonna be huge. 

Web3 will be bigger still. 

Which means that now’s the time to turn over that new leaf.  

Learn about crypto. Learn about NFTs. And then set aside a bit of cash and go bargain hunting through all the great projects that are going to create generational wealth for those who, like Fidelity and Home Depot, see where we’re headed.