Essentially, digital wallets are tokenized versions of multiple aspects of an individual, such as his or her government identity, employment and credit scores. “Every player in the global capital markets is working on tokenizing securities and how securities are traded in core capital markets,” Treat said. Treat saw digital wallets as critical for adoption by the financial services industry because of the efficiencies they will bring in the anti-money laundering and KYC (Know Your Customer) domains. The telecommunications industry could use digital wallets to look at ways to determine the uniqueness of each phone number. And the retailing industry could use metaverse features for ‘emotional tracking' of customers, and for eye tracking — capturing data as a shopper scans a product shelf, with readings on pupil dilation or changes in heart rate, Treat noted. Pitfalls around the metaverse For all the benefits the Metaverse promises, the technologies it spans have their share of shortcomings and risks of abuse. From a technological standpoint, the most commonly voiced concerns are over interoperability of devices and software that have different vintages and are on multiple platforms. Another common worry is about latency in communications systems, which for instance may affect how quickly an image refreshes, and variations in data upload and download speeds. Users of the metaverse must address those and other technology-related concerns to build robust business cases around the metaverse. “Most of the action is in the software and the hardware software integration is absolutely critical,” said MacDuffie. “Any of the experience that the software is meant to give you can be thrown off if you find the hardware is annoying, or if it interferes with immersion because it hurts your head or because it's too heavy or because you feel claustrophobic or whatever.”