Exchanging US$ for L$

You should REALLY provide some mechanism to convert real-world cash to L$. There are some big ticket items I'd like to purchase, and the available options to convert US$ to L$...well...they suck. Here are two possible options you could provide...

1) In-world "National Bank of Second Life" ATMs that charge real US$ from my credit card and dispense L$ into my SL account. This has the downside of causing a potential oversupply problem, creating L$ inflation, but if that starts to happen, just do what Alan Greenspan does. Increase the cost of L$.

2) In-world facilitation of L$ transfer transactions from one person to another. I should be able to pay another person in SecondLife real US$ (transfers money from my credit card to his) in exchange for L$. This has the downside that there are serious abuse/hacker concerns, which is why I would actually prefer the ATM approach. Either way accomplishes the same thing, though. Charge a transaction fee to cover your costs and possibly make a little money.

I should point out that I tried gamingopenmarket.com, but that forces me to open a PayPal or some other third-party money-transfer (YowCow/E-Gold) account. First, I really *didn't* want to get one of those accounts. I don't like people messing with my bank account directly because I can't just cancel their access if I have a dispute like I can with a credit card, and I don't get the consumer protection I get with credit cards. I gave in anyway because I really want more L$ and tried a PayPal account and quickly found out about the hairy account verification process, so I decide to try YowCow, only to learn that I have to fax in a credit card transfer, and it take 4-5 days to transfer money to gamingopenmarket.com, and both of these services charge transaction fees and insert their own delays along the way. And then after I buy a block of L$, I still have to transfer the L$ back into my SL account, which takes more time and hassle. AAAaaaggghhh!

This should really be easier!

Personaly I like the fact that its not easy. The inflation that There saw when they made this all possible was just horrid. And I don't trust enough that it wouldn't happen, it most likely would happen.

Inflation sucks, terribly. If you never logged into There, it costs around 15k "therebucks" to buy a vehicle, which is pretty expensive when you have no income and can't whip out your credit card.

A year ago SL didn't even have any third party sites to do this, you can still make money in world as you could back then. Patience and saving up really does pay off.

I would *hate* to see SL offer any direct methods for USD -> L$ transactions.

Its bad enough with some prices some people charge for things already, and the ebay offerings, and the buy with paypal item options. Direct exchange would just make all that worse.

On a side note, you can also use IGE instead of OGM if you want to try them out, not sure what their setup processes is like though, probly requires paypal or some such also.

The Lindens add enough money into the economy in the form of stipends and new user bonuses. They don't need to be doing it directly. In fact, they've always maintained that selling money directly was something they wouldn't ever do. It'd ruin the economy overnight.

One word for this idea


"THERE"


now put the idea on the fire so we can burn it and get it over with..

For the love of every diety everyone believes in and all that I hold sacred...

NO.

I mean, dang, holy broken economy batman. Yeeesh.

Well there's nothing preventing SL from running a GOM-type operation integrated with the SL interface.
That wouldnt inflate the economy, and on top of that, they could drain some L$ from the economy on each L$->US$ trade, and collect a small amount of money from each US$->L$ transaction.

yeah but it is gonna change the game, the more powerfull will not be the best designer or the best something else, only the one who can give the more $CASH$

totally unfair

already enough problems with landlord, if ppl haven't the patience to earn enough to pay, then create a bank system who can lend you money then you pay back

seriuously injecting rl money is ridiculous

and make the economy greedy

and there is already website who do it

I understand people saying the first idea could break the economy with over-inflation, but my second suggestion doesn't add any L$ money to the world, so why not? It's just making it easier to do what GOM does today.

Uh, Kyrah, if your "June 2004" date is correct, long before you had even heard of SL, this change had already taken place.
I used to own massive amounts of land and get involved with all kinds of projects, but since I am poor IRL my enjoyment of this game effectively ceased as of version 1.2.
Now I mostly fly around and talk to my friends.

Clarification - GOM doesn't add money to the SL economy.

It's an exchange only.

Uh, yes Merwan, and that's precisely what Lane said

i have a little experience of what it can do, i cme from There

Actually, there was very little inflation per say in There. The problem with the economy in There was mainly due to the flow of money being pretty unidirectional ... all the money went straight to the best designer and modelers, and by default, to There, who charged wholesale costs to every designer item, ensuring a high cost of living. This caused a great deal of frustration with players who could not compete in that market, and hence the abuse that came with it ... same kinda thing as in the real world (crime is commonly a direct result of stress and poverty).

The other major problem with There's economy was one of supply and demand. While the costs of user submitted items or common shop items remained more or less the same (the only rises seen were when certain modeled items hit the market that were clearly superiour in design than the standard painted There-models), commodities such as homes, clubhouses and funzones were being exponentionally swamped by user signup ... so that what would have started as 100 users to a house would have easily climbed to several thousand registered users to a house. Hence, with more demand, auction prices skyrocketed. This is hugely unfair, yes, but not abnormal. You see this in real life all the time.

SL has done a good a decent job of adding in sims at a steady pace more or less matching the demand. Kudos!

As for the afforementioned inflation, with There inc tying the tbuck to the american dollar with their fixed exchange rate, and tbux.com (by far the major supplier of tbucks to the community) stubbornly fixing their exchange rates at 2000 to 1 for buying and 2200 to 1 for selling, nearly every other exchange site has seen the prices hover between those, so that, even now, GOM's exchange rate rarely deviate from that, even after Michael Wilson's unfortunate post (although it drop like a cat tied to a cement block for a couple of weeks, but has since risen back up).

I apologize if this sounds confrontational, but I wish to ensure everyone has their facts straight before making wrongful comparisons. There's economy did suck, but not for the reasons you believe they do.

To actually lend a helping hand to Karl...

try: http://www.ige.com

You can purchase your L$ with a credit card and they will be delivered very quickly (under 30 min).

Or go to www.gamingopenmarket.com -- not as fast, but you can almost always get a better deal.

I agree - but if you notice his original problem is that he didn't want to open a paypal account/3rd party billing account, and found GOM to be a hassle in other aspects as well.

Whenever you use GOM, Zeppi takes a cut, and PayPal takes another cut. If we had a builtin GOM we could make more money by cutting out one of the middlemen(PayPal), it would be easier to use, and on top of that I would MUCH rather trust LL with my credit card than PayPal. PayPal has accrued a frightening reputation over the years...
LL could use this to drain some L$ from the economy on each L$->US$ trade, and even collect a small amount of money from each US$->L$ transaction (like Zeppi does).

Of course LL also has credit card transaction fees, and the service would take up extra employee time, so chances are the fees would need to higher than the fees being charged by GOM. Card not present - online service; transaction fees by visa/mastercard/amex are expensive no matter what.

Not to mention the fact Zeppi may very well be able to patent the idea of a stock market type exhchange for online currency (just a thought, haven't actually looked in to how original the idea is).

While i agree it could have positives and negatives, I don't see the end users getting a better deal with LL running one.

I'm not complaining about the fees charged by GOM, but you're not replacing GOM fees alone, you are replacing GOM fees + PayPal fees.
Also, neither Zeppi nor PayPal charge a monthly subscription fee that can be as high as $200. I'd hazard a guess that LL could very well (but definitely shouldnt) just take in the extra costs without hassle.
Also, LL could bundle several GOM trades into a single monthly CC transaction, or simply discount your USD profit from your monthly fee, without doing ANY CC transactions.


Well, before GOM, there was IGE and before any of those, people already traded game money and items on eBay. But that's like saying that LL shouldnt build a virtual world because we already had AW 10 years ago, and AW might patent the idea of a virtual world.


It would definitely cut down on newbies asking "how do i make money???". Dont forget that newbies who are broke and dont know about GOM are unlikely to be able to enjoy the game, so LL could gain more subscribers by allowing easy trading to replenish your stash of L$. Having more L$ also means you can buy more land which also gives money to LL. I've had people asking me for a loan so they could buy land, you know.
It would breathe new life into trading by giving it a lot more exposure and making it a lot easier.
Even if LL doesnt deem it profitable or advantageous to run their own GOM-type operation, they could very well integrate GOM into SL, either by having a menu option that would point your web browser to GOM or a more featureful interface that parses GOM's webpage and integrates it with the UI or something.
Zeppi would have everything to gain from this, so he could very well provide them with an RSS feed to use in the SL interface or something.

yah, GOM makes me happy
and with the implementation of XML-RPC, things may get even more automated than they presently are. I know Zeppi's been eager to see it happen.

In general, due to its exchange and stock market nature, you will always find a better deal at GOM than anything Linden native ... question of competition - users selling L$ will need to drop the price lower than Linden's base sale price to ensure sales, and then other sellers will then compete with each other, driving the price even lower. While increasing demand could drive the price up, it would rarely exceed Linden's exchange rate.

Mind you, given that GOM accepts payments through any huge number of methods (not just paypal, FYI), while Linden will only add support for credit card payments (do you see any others at the moment?), those users wishing to transfer money to and from their GOM account who do not have a credit card would be stuck buying and selling on their site or any other site that caters to the credit-less (yes, there are some without credit cards in game ... while this may seem to defeat the original purpose of a credit check, there is still a level of accountability inherent in this contrary to some places that offer anonymous trial accounts).