Self-made millionaire Jon ‘NEVERDIE’ Jacobs pulls up outside his opulent nightclub in an extravagant roadster and heads straight to the dance floor.

His highly sought-after music venue, Club Neverdie, once formed part of a substantial property portfolio comprising of a luxurious 1,000-apartment complex, a modern shopping mall and mega sports stadium.

But what makes these valuable assets unique, is that they exclusively exist in a virtual world, albeit one of real-world financial opportunity where rare goods are routinely exchanged for huge sums.

The entrepreneur purchased the virtual nightclub in the online game Entropia Universe for $100,000 (£75,000) after remortgaging his real life home and then began filling it up with legendary and rare items to entice other gamers to visit.

Mr Jacobs would later sell his space resort, built on a virtual asteroid orbiting a distant planet, for a combined $635,000 (£480,000), setting a new world record for the most valuable virtual item ever sold between players, pocketing an enormous profit in the process.