One of the few types of gambling allowed legally in the U.S. is the financial futures market. Futures markets basically allow people to bet on future prices of various financial instruments and commodities. This lets hedgers, who want to protect their positions in various markets, offload risk to speculators, who gladly take on the risk in the hope of large profits.
Ironically, although casino gambling is widely (and largely illegally) practiced in SL, there does not seem to be any equivalent to a futures market. And yet we have a situation here where SL business people are very unhappy with the risk of devaluation of Linden dollars and have no way of protecting themselves. Multiple postings appear every day here worrying about the L$ exchange rate and predicting future disaster.
A futures market in the L$/US$ rate would allow the same kinds of risk transfers which have been so beneficial in real-money futures markets. Speculators could bet on which way the exchange rate is going to go, and hedgers could lock in positions and immunize themselves against future fluctuations.
Obviously creating a working futures market would be an enormous challenge, in a society which has not even managed to put together a functional banking system. Investors need to have confidence that they can get back the money they have put in, plus their winnings if any. At least there might be some credibility to a futures market which basically runs a zero-sum game and takes a commision, versus the SL "banks" which have always seemed to be conjuring money out of thin air, making them look like Ponzi schemes.
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Lindex futures |
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Sandy Sullivan
Registered User
Join date: 3 Jan 2006
Posts: 17
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05-08-2006 21:35
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Iron Perth
Registered User
Join date: 9 Mar 2005
Posts: 802
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05-08-2006 21:44
I have in fact implemented a futures market for SL!
It's not really open to the public yet, but you can play around with an *alpha* version here: http://24.80.71.52/futures/view/pages/cntrl2.jsp?pg=home Unlike pretty much all other markets in the world, all trades on contracts will be 100% commision free . Free Forever *hopefully* You can login with "buyer" and password "pass" to look around and add/buy some contracts. This is just alpha and if you would like to help test, please let me know. Regards, Iron. |
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Adam Zaius
Deus
Join date: 9 Jan 2004
Posts: 1,483
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05-08-2006 21:53
I have in fact implemented a futures market for SL! It's not really open to the public yet, but you can play around with an *alpha* version here: http://24.80.71.52/futures/view/pages/cntrl2.jsp?pg=home Unlike pretty much all other markets in the world, all trades on contracts will be 100% commision free . Free Forever *hopefully* You can login with "buyer" and password "pass" to look around and add/buy some contracts. This is just alpha and if you would like to help test, please let me know. Regards, Iron. That's rather neat.  _____________________
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