For risk-prone investors, a new asset has been generating hype and fetching incredible prices: virtual real estate, sold in the form of plots of land and houses in the metaverse. Much ink has been spilled over the current real estate bull market, but less attention has been devoted to the parallel land rush happening simultaneously as investors divvy up the digital frontier, betting big on virtual land in the metaverse. These properties are not fertile farmland, nor do they constitute brick and mortar homes in which one could raise a family, but the prices they fetch might suggest otherwise. At the upper limits, they rival or surpass the price of physical real estate, with some virtual plots selling for as much as $500,000. The metaverse is a concept in which the internet would be presented as a simulated, three-dimensional world accessible through virtual reality. The concept has become increasingly popular in …