A Maltese iGaming expert has welcomed PN leader Bernard Grech’s pledge to invest in regulating the metaverse as part of a €1 billion package.

“I love the metaverse concept… it might sound like fantasy but it’s real and it already exists,” Trevor De Giorgio, the managing director of Greentube Malta, told a PN rally in St Julian’s this evening.

De Giorgio noted that Manchester City is building a virtual replica of the Etihad Stadium in the metaverse while McDonald’s has applied for ten metaverse-related patents that will allow people to enter a virtual restaurant and have food delivered to them in person.  

“It is the merging of the real and digital worlds, and part of our reality in the future will be on the metaverse,” he said.

“Let’s dream that we can be better. Malta has some of the world’s best iGaming companies and employ hundreds, if not thousands, of people. That’s why the PN is dreaming of the metaverse and wants to invest in it by regularising it.”

“Malta is good at regularising industries – we were world leaders in regulating financial services prior to 2013 and we’re world leaders when it comes to ship registration.”