Location: Watching the Virtual Exchange Rate
No matter how clearly Tateru Nino explains it, the voodoo economics of Linden Lab escape me.
I have been keeping an eye on LindenWatch at Twitter ever since the announcement by Linden Lab that the Linden Dollar had declined against government-issued currencies.
275L to the US Dollar has long been my benchmark for the currency. Yet early this morning, the rate rose to 444L. If you wanted to cash out some money under those circumstances, good luck.
That sort of whipsawing must stabilize if large landholders, like Melody who appeared on a panel with me recently at Treet TV's "Designing Worlds," are to keep paying their tiers to Linden Lab. These land barons pay in real-life currency into the Linden pot, and Melody admitted that her tier runs $20,000US a month.
Her renters, however, pay up in Lindens. This current-rate fluctuation--or is it a trend?--could make bigger mainstream news than the layoffs if the Linden Dollar does not stabilize. I don't know if the current return to 280L to the US Dollar is a temporary calm before a bigger storm.
What arcane formulas get employed to set the exchange rate? If there is even a hint of manipulation by the Lab, eager to increase their income, the law suits will come flying.
If you want a clear analysis of how the crisis relates to the iffy short-term future of immersive 3D worlds, sit down if you are really in love with SL, then read Roland Legrand's post at Mixed Realities.
2 comments:
Which government regulates the Lindex?
Who pulls all the ropes and pushes all the buttons of the LindeX?
Who owns and controls the servers that host the LindeX?
Who wrote and still has access to the raw code of the LindeX?
Who invented and virtually prints as needed Linden Dollars traded on the LindeX?
Who has oversight over the LindeX?
It is a simple matter of a button pushed, a lever pulled or a tweak in a couple lines of code and *suddenly* Linden Dollars gain value again at the rate of $270/$1.
Seriously, do you really think that (the "stabilization and return to "notmal levels") happened naturally?
Ari, that would be a reasonable speculation. What, after all, *backs* the value of the Linden Dollar at all?
As phony as I find the real-world US economy, we do have our T-notes to back the Dollar. Not that this is a reassuring thing, but it's more than LL offers.
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