Snow Crash author Neal Stephenson said owners of digital assets should be given a role in shaping the digital assets they own in order to create that sentimental value and stem speculation, arguing that a personal connection would bring balance to people’s incentives to gain a profit.  

“The way that we get a stable economy in the metaverse is by creating opportunities for people to build unique pieces of UGC,” Stephenson said, referring to user-generated content. “They might still one day go out and try to sell them, but probably not.”