currency conversion

I used to hear about the EQ economy being compared to the real world. I can't remember exactly but EQ ranked 50th or something when compared to economies of countries around the world. They also listed value of an EQ dollar compared to a US dollar too. Anything like that ever been done for SecondLife?

Ok, here's an idea. If you take an inworld object, and ask the creator how long they took to make it, and their RL hourly wage, you can work out an equivilent real dollar equivilent for the items development.

The EQ platinum <-> US $ exchange rate was calculated by looking at prices for platinum on ebay (or similar services). I haven't heard about Linden $ being for sale on ebay yet, but then I haven't been looking ;)

I'll sell you my roach coach for $5.

w00t roach coach!

*pays*

good idea but some are more skilled at building or scripting and a more complex/model script may take them less time than noob working the some project.

JacKO

Jack O i've been trying to contact you. I'm at: [email]Lensey_Roark@yahoo.com[/email]

Correlation between L$ and US$ is poor, since high-ticket items do not scale in price as they do in the real world.

I'll throw in fuzzy dice if you deliver me a happy meal.

A persons "real life" hourly wage, should in no way translate to SL-World dollar values. There are people here in SL who probably earn 60-200/hour and those that earn minimum wage (U.S.) to $20/hr and everyone inbetween. It does not make sense that the value of a persons objects for sale in SL be bound to McDonald's wages or the local private practice doctor.

SL price values are set rather arbitrarily according to what a person thinks they can get. Which I find somewhat greedy, but to each their own.


I've seen an unscripted sports car that didnt look like it could be sat in for $2000, which is 2-3x more than current moving vehicles in SL.

I think its very easy for people to price their objects out of the market in SL because of greed.


SL is a market economy. If a person grossly over-charges, you can expect that sooner or later someone else is going to produce that same item or something very similar for much less.

Oh.. Chip (if you read this), raise your prices and "We" will kill ya

-thats the collective "we" that repreents all your female customers!

Briana Dawson

Thx, Ezhar, that allowed me to find the article.

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991847


They ranked EQ 77'th out of the worlds economies. Guess this can't be done for SL just yet.

I remember hearing that the SL currency was like... L$10,867 for every US$1.

So I can make like... 50 cents.

I've been thinking about this too...

what if we took the amount of current monthly subscribers...

let's say 1000.

Multiply it by the average monthly cost of subscribing to SL.

Let's say 10 bucks... (it costs less per month depending on if you paid per year, per six months, etc.)

1000x10 = 10,000 bucks a month going into SL.

Now, the most you can get during a weekly stipend is 3500, and the least you can get is 1000... assume that we're doing averages again, and you get about 2250 a week in stipend.

If we're just going by THOSE rough numbers...

2250/week times 4 (for a month)...

9000 bucks.

9000 bucks divided by 10 bucks a month is 900 dollars.

Or, ninety Linden bucks to one US dollar.

Next, we need to factor in lost/gained money (from Dwell and Voting booths, and events, and not getting a stipend for being over 3500, and having too much taxes..)..

That's alot of work.

Anyone else wanna help me? I'm bored, I wanna play SL.

LF

There's no way to tell unless an account with zero objects, zero ratings, and only cash on them goes up on ebay.

I'll add some other ways of thinking about it:

Lordfly's number is one way - you can divide the number of lindendollars that you get in a month by the monthly subscription price to get a suggested exchange rate. So if avarage stipend is something like L$2000/USD$15 = 133 to 1.

Another way, as mentioned also, is to look at the session hours and size that relative to, lets say, a comparable working community. Couple months ago (this stat is given in our latest newsletter), residents spent around 50,000 hours in-world. Assuming a 40-hour work week, this is like saying that SL is like a 'company' of 300 people working on something. So depending on what the hourly wage of that imaginary company is, you can talk about the GDP of the collective group.

All very interesting stuff to watch develop.

Something that might interest people: a service for exchanging currencies from various games for either US$ or other game currencies: http://www.gamingopenmarket.com/

You know... I could build Fort Knox and pretend I have a buncha gold, push up the price of a L$, sell some on ebay, and cause a trend to occur where I can make a thousand bucks by giving up half my cash on hand then screw over the entire market as I run away laughing...

...

MY IDEA, YOU CAN'T HAVE IT!

Interesting idea, although I know you are kidding...(I think!?)

The lindens did something right about the economy, it isn't really possible to absorb the entire influx of LindenDollars (LD$ from now on). So, you don't get a 'corner on the market' by doing something like a ring of people absorbing currency and not returning any to the economy.

I do wish there was a slight speculative element, but that is for my own ambitious project list, much later...