[Economics] A school for the 21st century economy

[#Wittels-]

Metaverse University opens in Barcelona in September with a hybrid, face-to-face and telematic format

Àlex Moga was a deputy for three years and trained at MIT Ana Jiménez

"Technology can make everything worse depending on which hands are left." It is not a Luddite saying it, it is a warning from Àlex Moga, CEO of Horizon Metaverse and promoter of Metaverse University, a school of digital economy with a hybrid format that will open its physical and virtual doors next September in Barcelona.

 

This businessman, who was a deputy of the Parliament between 2012 and 2015 and has no interest in remembering that stage, warns that the inequality caused by the digital divide may be even greater, in a context in which humanity is experiencing "the acceleration largest” in its history. In 2019 Moga updated his computer science studies at MIT specializing in digital transformation – blockchain, artificial intelligence, internet of things, cybersecurity and the cloud – and in March of last year he took the Metaverse brand, before Mark Zukerberg announced last October the mutation of Facebook to Meta.

 

“The blockchain is here to stay and it is going to change everything,” says Moga, who adds that this has a very large impact on the economy. The blockchain – chain of blocks – is a mechanism that allows anonymous transactions and interactions between people, without intermediaries, he explains. Until now there were transactions that passed through centralized systems, such as banks, which act as mediators. With the blockchain you can avoid that actor who acts as an intermediary. For this reason, the school will prepare students for what Moga defines as "the economy of the 21st century", which, according to predictions, will leave behind the traditional economy.

 

The academic program will address what it is and how it works, issues such as the aforementioned blockchain -which will be the leitmotif of the training-, cryptoactives and cryptocurrencies -such as bitcoin and other digital currencies-, payment systems such as tokenization, finance decentralized (DeFi), digital works with a certificate of authenticity that may also have value in real life (NFTs), financing through cryptocurrencies (ICO) and investment. "If you don't know how cryptocurrencies and markets work, you can't invest in them, even though many people do it to speculate and without knowledge," says Moga.

 

At the school, which will offer basic and intensive one-week courses and later a four-month master's degree for profiles with prior training and executives, they do not intend to train investors. The intention is for students to gain an in-depth understanding of the digital economy and the possibilities it offers, as well as the metaverse, a virtual environment that recreates reality and in which you can interact with avatars, with anonymous profiles, and which allows you to provide services that now the barriers of the physical world prevent. A business that has generated a euphoria of investments in recent months and that, according to economic and technological forecasts, will grow significantly in this decade and an ecosystem in which aspects before the academic program play a fundamental role.

The forecast is that there will be, thanks to the hybrid format, 458 each month, and they hope that there will be registered both in Spain and in Latin America. Students will be charged based on income, about 300 euros for those in Spain, and 120 for those in South America. There will also be a scholarship program.

The business plan provides for an initial start-up capital of 465,000 euros and to date a first round of financing of 100,000 has been reached, but there will be more. Revenues for the first year are calculated at over 4 million, with profits of over one million. In the fifth year, income of more than 10 million and profits of more than 6 million.

The project will be presented next Tuesday, in person and online, at the Foment del Treball headquarters.

 

Link: https://www.lavanguardia.com/economia/bolsillo/20220403/8170838/renta-2021-2022-campana-declaracion-irpf-deducciones-vivienda.html