The Shiba Brothers, two brothers who became overnight millionaires on a meme-coin crypto bet, are using their earnings to invest in their next crypto venture: the metaverse. 

Recently, the Shiba Brothers—Tommy, 38, and James, 42, who have kept their surname private in the media to protect their anonymity—teamed up with Bezoge Earth to create a metaverse crypto game called The Legends of Bezogia. In the world of Bezogia, small customizable avatars called “Bezogis” navigate their way through a vast universe constructed almost entirely of in-game NFT items, including character skins, weapons, property and other items. 

The game will be the first metaverse to tear down barriers of entry and make the world of Bezogia accessible for anyone without the high initial fees that other metaverse spaces charge. Additionally, it’s the first rent-to-play metaverse in which players can rent characters from other players, earn cryptocurrency and NFTs, and pay their character landlords a portion of their in-game income. 

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The game has caught the attention of football legends Antonio Brown and Warren Sapp, who both endorsed the game’s vision of making cryptocurrency globally accessible to financially stressed economies and nations. In collaboration with Bezogia’s developers, Brown had a Bezoge character skin designed after him. 

Worth recently spoke with the Shiba Brothers, along with their representative Oskar Kowalski from the Global Incubator, about the legends of Bezogia and how the game will change the metaverse.  

Q: How did you get into crypto?

A: Shiba was our first crypto investment, we got into it based on a friend’s recommendation and started with $200 each, and after it grew 300 percent, we did a second investment, then a third. Personally, we each put $2,500 in Shiba. For us, together—$5,000 into crypto. I never considered investing in it before; I thought we missed our chance with Bitcoin. 

Before that, we were almost entirely in investment real estate. This year has been a crash course. Once we got into Shiba, it became serious, and we had to get up to speed, but we had almost no knowledge of crypto. 

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What makes the Legends of Bezogia stand out from other metaverse games? 

The pure concept of the game is to become the first play-to-earn and rent-to-earn metaverse game, as well as the first game to allow users to access it quickly—no barrier to entry access. You don’t need money or [if] you don’t know anything about crypto, you press one button, you get a wallet and are allowed into the game. 

If you don’t have money, you can rent one of the Bezogia characters that someone else owns, and you’ll be able to intake capital while you play. What we saw with other metaverse games is that whole economies [were] built around it. You had kids and adults in the Philippines earning more money in the video game than the jobs they could get in society. What you’re creating is an ability for third world countries to create economies around these metaverse products. 

Is there a learning element to the game?

You can learn about crypto while making money. The whole metaverse itself is a tutorial on the crypto community itself. It’s an access point to create one capitalization to the public and to be able to learn about the crypto world while you’re playing. There are no other rent-to-play [metaverse games]. It creates a tremendous value system and opportunity to aggregate users all around the world to make money. 

It takes a lot of money to play other metaverse games. Here, the concept is you can play without money. If you don’t own an NFT, you can play and make money. It can change the way the world works and economies of the world. 

How are the NFTs earned?

The rental—there’s no risk to the user; you give a portion of your earnings to the owner of the NFT. 

Everything is NFT, the characters, everything. The characters have skins, and those skins are NFTs. Someone paid $350,000 to be Snoop Dogg’s digital neighbor in the metaverse. The whole point behind the metaverse itself is to have skins, which turn into NFTS. We want to make everything accessible. 

In the game, you battle and earn blocks, which are cryptocurrency, and over time, hope they go up in value or you can trade in your blocks for NFTs—whether its weapons or skins, or you can summon new players into the game. So basically, you’re earning blocks that you can trade for NFTs that have real world values. 

We also have the option to pay-to-play, where you can buy skins and weapons with cash. You have a combination of play-to-earn, rent-to-earn and pay-to-play. This is a decentralized model. The meta sector is the highest sector there is. 

One of the great things about this project? Anyone who is interested can speak directly to the developers on Twitter, Instagram, etc. It’s a community-based project.Â