Cindy Jin, Co-Founder of Metapoly, is a female entrepreneur who is passionate about NFTs and the Metaverse. Before co-founding Metapoly, she launched Mintology Studio, her own startup in the NFT space. Prior to that, Cindy worked as a commercial lead in e-commerce and digital marketing corporations including IPG and the Lane Crawford Joyce Group. She has been involved in crypto investment personally since 2017.
What was your journey like to get where you are?
Before starting my adventures into cryptocurrencies, I was a corporate professional working in fashion, e-commerce, and digital marketing for over a decade. Even with a decent payroll and working at a managerial level for years, I still couldn’t afford any housing in Shanghai (where I was living) in my late 30s. This got me to rethink what went wrong, and I realized how the real world economy works and what impact it has on the majority of society. The government keeps minting the money, which essentially goes to the major corporations, while normal people barely survive and try to fight inflation. The worst thing is there’s no education about the system, but thanks to the internet and social media, younger generations are able to break free from the traditional way of thinking. And that’s where I started to grow an interest in crypto and blockchain. That being said, I never really pursued a career in crypto until late last year when NFTs started gaining a lot of traction in the mainstream. I quit my job as a commercial lead at a leading e-commerce enabler company in Singapore and began my startup journey in the crypto space by founding Mintology Studio, an NFT agency and studio that assists in advising and launching NFT projects. Around November 2021, the Metaverse suddenly became a hot topic because of Facebook’s name change to Meta. That’s when my partner and I came up with the idea of Metapoly to democratize land ownership in the Metaverse for normal citizens.
In a simpler phrase, what is your company exactly doing?
Metapoly is the world’s first decentralized Metaverse land tycoon that aims to democratize and fractionalize Metaverse lands in Web3 for ordinary citizens. It acts as a land bank that acquires Metaverse land assets, while the treasury is owned and run by the DAO. Our mission is to expand the virtual ecosystem by providing the infrastructure to unify the Metaverses, along with a reserve currency — the D33D token — which will enable people to enjoy ownership of assets from all the different Metaverses. The community is given the power to control the Metaverse’s future through the governance of the D33D token.
What about Metaverse are you most excited for in the future?
The most exciting part of the Metaverse is that it has the possibility to be a world with no limitations or boundaries in terms of nationality, sexuality, and race. You get to be anyone you want to be in the Metaverse. The Metaverse is a brave world and opens so many opportunities and possibilities to participants, and we believe that there should be multiple ways for people to be able to engage with it. At Metapoly, we want to be part of the movement to provide a sense of belonging and pride that comes with owning a piece of land and having a say in the Metaverse’s future.
Why should we be paying attention to the Metaverse?
“What exactly is the Metaverse?” is a question we get asked a lot! It’s not a game, it’s not just The Sandbox. It’s the whole internet, and it’s the transformation from Web2 to Web3. Nobody knows how long it will take until we really get there and what the Metaverse is going to look like, or how it’s going to change real life. But the Metaverse is here now, and the transition to Metaverse technologies is happening so quickly that even the large corporations and giant ventures are not able to look away. In fact, JPMorgan has recently opened a lounge in Decentraland, one of the biggest Metaverses in the market. Another good example is that even though a lot of people are still struggling to understand the use cases and real value of NFTs, the amount of revenue generated and the impact it has brought is starting to shift the mass market’s views on crypto and DeFi. Although the world of Ready Player One might not be the ideal future for a lot of us, the younger generation may feel otherwise. One thing is for sure: the evolution of technology will drive humanity forward. The Metaverse is just one part of the inevitable path to this exciting future.
