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Robinson’s “Metaverse” Pitch — Two Stocks and a Crypto Revealed

What's being teased by Nova-X Report?

By Travis Johnson, Stock Gumshoe, December 16, 2021

A quickie for you here today, as your friendly neighborhood Gumshoe deals with a tooth emergency and a feeling of impending doom about Christmas shopping… Michael Robinson is pitching the Metaverse as “The Next Tech Rush,” and teasing two stocks and one cryptocurrency as plays on that theme, all in ads for his Nova-X Report, his “entry level” tech investing newsletter.

We’re not going to get to go in depth on all of them this time out, but we can at least get you some names to chew on… or spit out, as the case may be. The story has no doubt changed quite a bit since this ad first circulated in mid-November, but I’m still seeing it today and still getting lots of “metaverse” questions, so here goes…

The promise is in the headline:

Big Tech is spending billions of dollars to develop the evolution of the internet…

“But three small players could be the real winners.

“Each one is trading for less than $30 and hands you a chance to make a fortune in the coming years”

A little more of the big picture from the ad:

“The Metaverse – it’s the evolution of the internet, a shared virtual world where people gather to play games, socialize, buy things, and work.

“And it’s where Big Tech is going.

“Every major tech company is in there – Apple, Amazon, Google, Samsung, Facebook, and Microsoft – all working toward creating hardware and software that will form the basis for humans connecting to the Metaverse. “

This is what I wrote in a Friday File last month, when I wrote about a bunch of hardware companies who were getting a “metaverse bump”, in case you’re curious:

“The Metaverse has gotten everyone all hot and bothered since Mark Zuckerburg changed Facebook’s name to Meta Platforms and talked about taking the lead in the virtual world… and that catalyzed a lot of investor interest in any company that might reasonably be a supplier or player in that universe. Nobody really knows what the future will look like, but the technology for realtime 3D graphics and live interaction and the capabilities of low-cost hardware have now caught up enough to the vision that “virtual worlds” are now feasible outside of high-end gaming, whether that’s for social events or entertainment or for work meetings that give participants more of a presence than Zoom.

“We’re not all going to be living in a dystopian Ready Player One world in the next five years, and some of the technology needs a few more years before it will be affordable or attractive to mass markets, and most of us are not going to want to wear an Oculus Quest headset for more than half an hour, but that’s clearly the direction in which technology can take us if we want to follow. And, of course, that Hollywood version of the metaverse and virtual reality is just one side of the potential — there are a lot of practical problems that massive improvements in high-speed computing and virtual world simulations can help to solve, from climate modeling to factory design to delivery route optimization and self-driving cars.”

And what are the specific plays Robinson is touting here? First clues…

“Stock #1 to Watch

“First, we have a company focused on digitizing the real world with a groundbreaking tech that turns real buildings into 3D images….

“We’re not talking about a few million – we’re talking about 20 billion spaces worldwide that could be digitized to create our world in the Metaverse…

“And right now, less than 1% is digitized.

“And get this…

“Facebook is already partnering with this company in a special project that is helping teach its artificial intelligence to understand and interact with real constructions.”

Thinkolator sez that’s pointing at digital real estate pioneer Matterport (MTTR). The stock has drifted down recently with the other growth stocks, so it’s around $22 today, not the $27 Michael Robinson teases… and it will probably remain volatile, since the business itself is not nearly big enough yet to fill out that $5 billion market cap. This is what I wrote about them after their earnings report, about a month ago:

“And on the ‘bringing the real world into the metaverse’ side we have Matterport (MTTR), a company that is focused on a practical application of all of this 3D visualization technology — creating ‘digital twins’ of real estate to help with insurance coverage, building management, visualizing renovations and construction and making estimates, and providing realistic virtual walk-throughs for real estate sales. The attractiveness of this company relies on its business model of offering up low-cost ‘management’ of this virtual real estate. This is another one that sits in my portfolio as just a small call option speculation at this point, since I am not really sure what a fair valuation might be, but the potential to scale dramatically fast is there if they can cement their market leadership early.

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“This quarter, Matterport came in essentially where analysts were expecting, revenue a little short and earnings a little higher than anticipated, which doesn’t really mean much — it’s very early on, and Matterport just recently released their core capture software for Android, which will dramatically increase their addressable market. What I’m mostly looking for is growth in ‘spaces under management’ and subscriber growth, since getting that foot in the virtual door is critical in these early stages when most spaces have not been digitized, and growth there remains strong — they’re up to 439,000 subscribers now, up from about 250,000 last year when the SPAC merger was announced, and ‘spaces under management’ is up to 6.2 million, up from about 4.4 million. They’re well-funded, thanks to that SPAC merger, so I’m curious to see how the next few quarters of growth go — the stock is obviously expensive, at a $5.5 billion valuation they trade for about 85X the current level of annualized recurring revenue, which is why I’m still a bit wary, but the stickiness of virtual property ‘management’ and the early mover advantage they can earn with their established ‘capture on demand’ service that’s already available in 80 cities in the US (and expanding) might be impressive… and they have enough money to try to prove that.”

Next?

“Stock #2 to Watch

“Second, we have a small-cap company with less than a $1 billion market cap that is trading at around $7.

“It is now flying under the radar of big Wall Street investors, but I believe that won’t be the case for long…

“This company is on the cutting edge of making mind-boggling tech solutions for military, enterprise, industrial, medical, and everyday consumers.

“Its portfolio includes augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed-reality systems.

“It’s so advanced that one of its biggest clients is the Department of Defense of the United States.

“Recently, this tiny company got a contract to provide eyepieces for a special program in the military to locate and accurately engage targets with precision-guided munitions.”

And they’ve moved the technology forward for augmented reality headsets, which might be an important tool for metaverse users…

“This tiny company recently announced it had successfully developed a new superlightweight optics system that is set to raise the bar for the competition…

“Their major breakthrough represents a foundational milestone for the emerging Metaverse market.

“Bulky, heavy headsets have been a major barrier to faster consumer adoption for many years. Well, no more…

“This new lightweight optic system opens possibilities of mass adoption beyond the military to a use for businesses, consumer goods, and medical products.”

That’s Vuzix (VUZI), the “smart glasses” company that I’ve covered many times over the years — it’s been around for a dozen years as a niche product company whose glasses and similar equipment were mostly used in factories and by the military, and it has been teased as a hardware leader and a big potential mass market winner since the early days of the Google Glass prototype eight or nine years ago. Here’s what their revenue (orange line) and share price look like over the past decade or so that they’ve been trading:

VUZI Chart

Maybe it will work out, and there are certainly plenty of fans, but I’m skeptical that a tiny hardware company can make it in this space while competing with projects that Google, Apple, Microsoft and others have dabbled in for years. I do think augmented reality and the metaverse present some amazing opportunities, but I like the software ideas much more than the hardware ideas at this point. Feel free to try to convince me otherwise, I may be a little too cynical — perhaps just because I’ve seen this one teased and promoted so many times over the years.

And one more?

“My #1 Cryptocurrency to Watch

“And to complete my favorite picks for the Metaverse trend… I’ve got a cryptocurrency.

“A lot of people don’t get this…

“But cryptocurrencies will play a major role in the Metaverse.

“Today, we place high value on physical objects we own in the real world.

“In the future, we’ll place high value on the digital objects we own in the Metaverse…”

That’s really the only argument that makes sense to me for the recent NFT craze, just the movement of our fascination with artwork and collectibles from our living room walls to our virtual spaces.

And some clues about which NFT-related cryptocurrency we’re dealing with here:

“… the market for digital objects is just getting started.

“And that brings me to my favorite NFT coin – whose mission is to introduce blockchain technology into mainstream gaming successfully…

“By focusing on a blockchain-based virtual world, they allow users to create, build, buy, and sell digital assets.

“And it’s already attracting huge attention in the $175 billion gaming market.

“Because this crypto already has…

“$144 million in gross merchandise value…
“500,000 registered wallets where people are already storing this coin, and…
“12,000 unique digital landowners in the game.

“This means that a lot of real people are already playing with and buying digital objects in this virtual world.

“That’s why it just raised a $93 million investment led by a major conglomerate to help grow its virtual world based on NFTs. “

That’s the Sandbox — which is essentially a big game platform which operates through NFTs, letting you own virtual spaces and objects in the game. Here’s how they describe themselves (they post a longer explanation here if you’re curious):

“The Sandbox is a decentralised, community-driven gaming ecosystem where creators can share and monetise voxel assets and gaming experiences on the Ethereum blockchain.

“Using The Sandbox’s free software, such as VoxEdit and the Game Maker, players, artists and game designers can create ASSETs and experiences, such as games, dioramas and art galleries, for themselves and to share with others. These can be monetised to earn the creator passive income.”

The basis for all of the transactions within the game (sorry, “ecosystem”) is their token, called SAND, which like many altcoins is built on the Ethereum blockchain. You use SAND to buy LAND within the system (which is limited), or NFTs, or to earn money by selling your content or provide access to the games you develop on that platform, kind of like the Roblox universe but much more decentralized. SAND is pretty widely discussed by the folks who are interested in crypto’s role in the metaverse… whether or not it becomes a big deal essentially depends on the network effect — how many people want to participate in that virtual world, with more people making it more attractive, and, once they experiment, how much will the experience reinforce their excitement about becoming more active, buying LAND or making NFTs or games to share and sell with other people in the community.

Cool idea, I have no idea whether it will gain enough traction to become a big deal. Right now the SAND token is trading for about $5, so it has gone up since Robinson’s tease was written. That one is available on lots of platforms, including Voyager as well as the larger exchanges like Binance, but it’s not currently available to trade on Coinbase.

And that’s it for today’s quickie, dear friends — I’m sure many of you can share more wisdom on these ideas, so please use our little comment box below and let ‘er rip!

Disclosure: As of this writing I own shares of and/or call options on Amazon, Google parent Alphabet, Voyager and Matterport among the companies mentioned above, as well as Sandstorm Gold, which shares a ticker with the SAND token but is otherwise unrelated. I will not trade in any covered stock for at least three days, per Stock Gumshoe’s trading rules.

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agentp
December 16, 2021 4:53 pm

MF had a pitch today that was for the Millionacres Real Estate Trailblazers service that included 9 stocks and Matterport MTTR was their give away pick as a company with 20x revenue potential from here. Anyone purchase the service and know the other picks?

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englishprofessor
Irregular
englishprofessor
January 4, 2022 10:54 pm
Reply to  agentp

I don’t know the uber-list they’re running, but they’ve put out a number of articles praising Unity (U) and Tencent (TCHEY). They’ve spoken with reserved optimism about Himax (HIMX) in an article, if I’m recalling it properly, about metaverse infrastructure plays. But their article on Unity does the company justice.

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texasranger
texasranger
December 16, 2021 5:30 pm

James Altucher was pitching SAND last week

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TL
Irregular
TL
December 16, 2021 5:52 pm

SAND (and XRP also) can be traded on Uphold. I’ve been using their service about a year now and haven’t experienced any issues.

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Bill C
Guest
Bill C
December 16, 2021 6:48 pm

Throw a dart.

I have 23 different coin or token.

HBAR, VET, XLM, XRP, ADA, XDC, ALGO, MATIC, QRT.

Many others.

SAND is good but migrating to MATIC or Polygon due to high gas fees of ERC-20 tokens.

SAND is one of 10 good metaverse plays. I have more.

Look into ATLAS or POLIS as the governance token of Star Atlas.

This time 5 years from now I will be typing from my cacao plantation high in the Andes.

And I don’t mean altitude…

Knowledge is KING.

Thank you Gumshoe.

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tmitchel
tmitchel
December 21, 2021 7:47 pm
Reply to  Bill C

I hope you are right, my crypto portfolio is similar so fingers-crossed.

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englishprofessor
Irregular
englishprofessor
January 4, 2022 10:49 pm
Reply to  Bill C

Bill, I don’t chat much here, so this sounds abrupt and random. I’m just curious… it’s three weeks after you posted these cryptos. Is the list still the same? As I’ve discovered, a lot can change in the crypto/nft space in three weeks. I’m a low-risk kind of person, but I jumped on the bandwagon about two months ago. I’ve crushed it with LoopRing (LRC) once rumors started circulating about them partnering with GameStop (GME); crushed it with MANA, and will be holding that long-term; done great with FLOW because Dapper Labs is awesome in a way that my GenX recluse mind doesn’t grasp but my wallet appreciates; and GALA, ONE, AVAX, SAND, AXS, ENJ, and others. I’ve also allowed myself to be decapitated by a bunch on coins I never should have bought… but the gamble taught me some lessons. Anyway, I’m just curious to see what’s on your list. I don’t know enough about how to differentiate most of them, or the potential of one metaverse as opposed to another (other than the obvious surface quality).

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Lisa Bass
Lisa Bass
December 16, 2021 8:41 pm

I bought SAND late spring at .57 and took out my initial investment plus $4,200 in profit a few weeks ago when it was at $7.50-ish…what I kept is worth about 10k today…pretty dang happy about how THAT went!! Wish it was all that easy!! I also bought MANA, another metaverse gaming play, this fall at .75, and two months later, I retrieved my initial investment plus about $550 when it was at $5.25-ish; I’m holding onto the rest; I truly believe these two will continue to do well – very well – moving forward…of course, you have to be able to stomach the volatility and use your head/keep your cool! Thanks for the info, Travis! Hope your tooth gets some relief and you get started on your Christmas shopping! Merry Christmas everyone!

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Kim
Kim
December 16, 2021 8:43 pm

SAND (crypto) is also recommended by Teeka Tewari as well as MATIC (Polygon) which is also recommended by the Weiss people – The Metaverse will no doubt be huge & we are in the infantile stage but these two are strong projects – Kids walk around with their noses in their phones as it is, what’s to stop them from living & owning another reality What I read on the Coindesk site in early November…”The “Metaverse” theme is the rage now, hence most metaverse coins are doing well. SAND is actually backed by SoftBank. This gives SAND an advantage – I do believe both investors and traders find much comfort in projects backed by such a massive institutional player. The Sandbox has forged various partnerships with prominent celebrities and brands (eg. Snoop Dogg, Walking Dead, The Smurfs, Atari & Cryptokitties, etc). These will continue to add more credibility to the brand and grow the SAND franchise even after the hype.” So there you have it in a nutshell, make your own decision.

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cabaoke
Member
cabaoke
December 17, 2021 12:15 am

This is a difficult spot for me. As an old guy the concept of the “metaverse” seems crazy. But I think of the movie “Ready player one” and can’t help but feel that everyone much younger than me is going to be all over it! I may disagree with what facebook is doing to society (not good) but Zuckerberg clearly has a better understanding of what the more contemporary part of the population is interested in and I am not willing to bet against him. Basically, short to mid term economic positive but, huge long term negative for society in general.

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Jeffrey
December 17, 2021 2:41 am
Reply to  cabaoke

Easy now- here’s a word out of favor and ain’t no coin. ETHICS -I believe I may be ahead even of you in years . I grew up right after the big war. Think Zuckerberg knows about ethics?

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McEwan
Member
McEwan
December 17, 2021 1:51 pm
Reply to  Jeffrey

In a word, no he does not. However, neither does government or business anymore. There is only profit and loss. More is the shame.

Martin
December 17, 2021 8:47 am

I recently bought some yearn.finance (YFI) . I noticed this Coin sold as high as 92,500 over the last year .. never heard about it before. Bought some at about 20,000

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Justin
Guest
Justin
December 18, 2021 8:44 am

GALAXY DIGITAL ( BRPHF GLXY.CA) is so far ahead on the trends + their AUM (+Bitgo), that why bother elsewhere.

Im open for arguments on how Galaxy isnt the best stock to own in this entire ecosystem

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Walter Pisary
Member
Walter Pisary
December 19, 2021 2:42 am

Can’t really add much to what was already said about metaverse. It is mind boggling to me that a pair of virtual sneakers can cost more than the real ones, and I don’t see much value in owning a painting unless it hangs on my wall. But as an investor, I want to be in at the early innings of a massive trend, and I think this one is THE trend. I resisted buying bitcoin saying ” I will not invest in something I don’t understand” until one of my friends pointed out that I don’t need to understand electricity in order to switch on the light. Had I bought it when I first had the opportunity (at about 1/20 of what I eventually paid), I could be on my way to cacao plantation high in the Andes right now. I will not make the same mistake twice. The train is leaving the station but it is still moving slowly enough to get on board.
SAND is indeed pitched by many crypto “experts”. For the uninitiated, it is available on Gemini and it is a very easy exchange to navigate.

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lalgulab12
December 19, 2021 10:59 am

For those who want to start investing in the crypto market and get almost full exposure of the most talked about crypto’s in the EASIEST WAY without going thru Pages of literature without understanding most of it just send me an email and I will tell you how to invest in all these fancy crypto strategies with just a couple of clicks. AND BELIEVE MR this is the best and easiest way I have ever come across. You also get to earn mining fees with one click and no fancy know how. I can give you the links here but I don’t think it’s allowed

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traceyrupea
traceyrupea
December 20, 2021 7:05 pm
Reply to  lalgulab12

lalgulab12 – can you provide names without the links so we can search for it? Thank you!

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theyounginvestor
Member
theyounginvestor
December 22, 2021 9:53 am
Reply to  traceyrupea

Would appreciate the info lalgulab12. Thanks. apexhealthsupplies@gmail.com

lalgulab12
December 24, 2021 1:12 pm

Just posted the link

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lalgulab12
December 24, 2021 1:11 pm
Reply to  traceyrupea

Just posted the link

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lalgulab12
December 27, 2021 10:58 am
Reply to  traceyrupea

Link provided in discussion

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wade3
Irregular
December 21, 2021 5:59 pm
Reply to  lalgulab12

Would appreciate the info, Lalgulab. Thanks. wade.huie3@gmail.com

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lalgulab12
December 24, 2021 1:12 pm
Reply to  wade3

Just posted the link

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Tracey
Tracey
December 29, 2021 4:24 pm
Reply to  lalgulab12

Hi lalgulab12! would love to have you email me the info. gifteddesignchik@hotmail.com

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huckfin
Member
huckfin
February 5, 2022 12:54 am
Reply to  lalgulab12

lalgulab12 – I realize I’m late to the game but can you send me the links? Thanks

christensent
Irregular
christensent
December 21, 2021 3:57 pm

I bought a load of sandstorm gold. I know i was supposed to buy the crypto. Whatever. It felt right.

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jay_
Irregular
jay_
December 24, 2021 11:31 am
Reply to  christensent

ha!funny

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lalgulab12
December 24, 2021 1:25 pm

Message to all Doc’s ubscribers : Don’t bother with services offered with references like “IF YOU HAD BOUGHT APPLE FOR $2 “. Don’t ven think about option trading. The best 3 services I have seen so far in the last 50 years are : STOCKGUMSHOE,CATHY WOODS ARK ETFs and CHAIKINANALYTICALS.

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olly123
December 27, 2021 1:58 am

Agreed however , to be fair must include profits unlimited, & disruption investor, to the list

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kazito
March 8, 2022 12:19 am

Hello gumshoe family.
Does anyone know what are the 9 “Next Generation Coins” that James Altucher is touting in his “Early-Stage Crypto Investor” publication, by any chance?
He claims that as soon as these 9 coins get uplisted in Coinbase, the coin values will soar.
I really appreciate anyone sharing the names of the 9 coins. Thanks, again.
Best,

Kazito

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edgarzambrano
Member
edgarzambrano
April 12, 2022 11:57 pm

The applications of VR and AR technology are exciting, but I don’t want to experience it in a universe created by Mark Zuckerberg. He has shown since the inception of Facebook that he values profits over people, and he cannot be trusted to lead us into the future. I hope to see competition in this space where we are not all subject to the whims of one or two big players. If it’s just Meta, I’ll stick to the real universe with physical objects and people. To learn more about Defi, you can read https://www.dexfolio.org/blog-posts/multi-dex-portfolio-trackers

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