USD only?
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Jauani Wu
pancake rabbit
Join date: 7 Apr 2003
Posts: 3,835
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06-01-2006 10:10
the L$ has minimums too. ex: 26000 L$/annum for 72$ 2000 L$/month for 10$ Lindex has a 20 USD purchase minimum. the L$ is convenient for LL to a> avoid responsibility for the SL economy b> entice players with freshly minted currency to buy other peoples workthe L$ is convenient for players a> to evade taxes b> to avoid a paper trail for their "second" life your visa card can automatically do a purchase in another currency. as a result business owners do not need to deal with foreign currencies. From: Surreal Farber I've suggested this several times. The chief hurdle I see is micropayments. No one wants to be charged a handling fee for every $0.35 sale. I think the answer is for the website to use a deposit account and then subtract your sales from your balance. Let's say that you have a minimum deposit of $10. You send that via PayPal, credit card, carrier pigeon, whatever. Then, you purchase against it until your balance is zero. One PayPal, etc. fee.
SLBoutique and SLExchange could likely make this conversion easily. With HTML on a prim supposedly in the near future, you could shop from inside SL.
One reason they may be reluctant to is that they then need to be concerned with sales taxes - which means paperwork, international paperwork. And they would likely need to keep the two-currency system for the convenience of both buyers and sellers.
My bet is taxes is the killer consideration.
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Jauani Wu
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Jauani Wu
pancake rabbit
Join date: 7 Apr 2003
Posts: 3,835
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06-01-2006 10:18
From: Jonas Pierterson Keep that debate as is if you would. I don't care if they buy the stipends off the lindex, as long as I get my 500 lindens a week I paid for, minimum. The problem most have with stipends could be easily rectified by buying them off the lindex.
Its also not welfare for premiums, since its paid for. Don't be an ass and group it in with that. either SL is part of RL and you paid for your L$ with USD and you support it as a proxy currency and the right for players to charge what they will to make money providing content in SL. or you believe SL is seperate from RL, and you pay USD to play this game and L$ is a game currency seperate from RL in which case SL is really a seperate life in which people dependant on stipends are living on welfare. LL will never buy L$ off the market. it's not good business to spend money on virtual data you can create. it's only all of us who share in the mass hallucination that the L$ is a viable proxy currency that would buy or sell it. so in this instance, when the institution gives someone money to help them get by in their virtual life, that person is a welfare bum. that's quite alright though. i've spent extended periods of my SL as a welfare bum. i work hard in RL to pay for the privilege to be a worthless bum in SL.
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Jauani Wu
hero of justice
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"Oh Jauani, you're terrible." - khamon fate
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Nicole David
Furniture Queen
Join date: 7 Sep 2005
Posts: 134
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06-01-2006 10:24
I think it's a great idea and I'm all for it. Wouldn't mind helping something like this get started too.
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Dianne Mechanique
Back from the Dead
Join date: 28 Mar 2005
Posts: 2,648
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06-01-2006 10:25
I personally would boycott any system that forced me to use the USD as currency just on principle. Also since most purchases are odd fractions of US dollars, it would be silly and likely contribute strongly to inflated prices as people rounded stuff up to single dollar values. If it was the only alternative I would have to think about quitting the game I guess, but I think if things in SL got that bad, other alternative games would likely be popping up already. The USD is also not the most stable currency lately anyway.  |
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Paulismyname Bunin
Registered User
Join date: 29 Nov 2005
Posts: 243
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06-01-2006 10:39
From: Yumi Murakami I don't think USD transactions will ever be able to happen, though. Not because of rising prices but because of the legal liabilities. Unless Linden Lab acted as an "escrow" for all transactions, anonymity would be gone, because the buyer and seller would see each other's real names on their transaction registers. If LL did act as a broker, they put themselves in a very precarious position ("well, LL took my money, they just didn't send it on"  . Casinos would have to be somehow banned. People selling items that went wrong, or that were over-described, could get sued IRL. Every SL player would have to have their income taxed, even if they just wanted to spend it on in-world items. Well I "own" land in Dreamland and there, your pay tier directly to Anshe Chung in real US dollars via Pay Pal. It is a connected world and to be frank (and if I really put my mind to it) it is possible to discover the real life identity of any person here from the US/UK/Europe/Canada and many other places where rule of law exists, if there is legal need. As for my own real life ID, well I know Anshe's possible real name and she knows mine, I have no great hang up over it. |
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Lewis Nerd
Nerd by name and nature!
Join date: 9 Oct 2005
Posts: 3,431
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06-01-2006 10:46
Remember that, for the majority of the world, the US dollar is not 'real money' either, rather just another method of paying for things.
I use Pounds Sterling in real life, and exchange that, forced to do so via US$, into L$. The US$ is losing value against many other major world currencies, again, so you'll always get someone who loses out whatever real world currency SL operates in.
Lewis
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Ricky Zamboni
Private citizen
Join date: 4 Jun 2004
Posts: 1,080
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06-01-2006 10:54
From: Lewis Nerd Remember that, for the majority of the world, the US dollar is not 'real money' either, rather just another method of paying for things.
I use Pounds Sterling in real life, and exchange that, forced to do so via US$, into L$. The US$ is losing value against many other major world currencies, again, so you'll always get someone who loses out whatever real world currency SL operates in.
Lewis Presumably any of the "majors" will be more stable (and, imprtantly, more transparency in monetary policy decisions) than the L$. Why not use JPY as the SL currency? It's currently fine-grained enough for an effective micropayment system. |
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Yumi Murakami
DoIt!AttachTheEarOfACat!
Join date: 27 Sep 2005
Posts: 6,860
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06-01-2006 11:03
From: Paulismyname Bunin Well I "own" land in Dreamland and there, your pay tier directly to Anshe Chung in real US dollars via Pay Pal.
It is a connected world and to be frank (and if I really put my mind to it) it is possible to discover the real life identity of any person here from the US/UK/Europe/Canada and many other places where rule of law exists, if there is legal need. If there is legal need, yes. But most people are fairly confident that they aren't going to do anything that'll put them in the position of being subpoenad by another resident. Anshe Chung's real name is well known; it's documented on several different web sites. But that doesn't mean that everyone would feel the same way. There was someone at Show And Tell last night who said they were making a nice profit from renting out several islands.. under the name "Naked Landlady Rentals". I suspect they wouldn't be quite so keen to have their real name revealed as Anshe!  |
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Jauani Wu
pancake rabbit
Join date: 7 Apr 2003
Posts: 3,835
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06-01-2006 12:17
From: Lewis Nerd Remember that, for the majority of the world, the US dollar is not 'real money' either, rather just another method of paying for things. the USD is the only real money in the world right now. just because you don't use it everyday doesn't mean that it doesn't rule your life.
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Jauani Wu
hero of justice
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"Oh Jauani, you're terrible." - khamon fate
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Paulismyname Bunin
Registered User
Join date: 29 Nov 2005
Posts: 243
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06-01-2006 12:24
From: Lewis Nerd Remember that, for the majority of the world, the US dollar is not 'real money' either, rather just another method of paying for things.
I use Pounds Sterling in real life, and exchange that, forced to do so via US$, into L$. The US$ is losing value against many other major world currencies, again, so you'll always get someone who loses out whatever real world currency SL operates in.
Lewis You and I both Lewis. Trouble is what we both make on the swings we loose on the roundabouts, it is a sad world when we cannot arbitrage the difference and have a smug sense of shoudenfroud |