Second Life needs stable currency

During the past 18 months the value of L$ has decrease from 5 US$ per 1000 L$ to 3.33 US$ per 1000 L$. If this trend continues it poses one serious issue for investors and the economy in Second Life.

To address this, together with partner businesses both from land, service and content sector, we have designed one alternative currency for micro-transactions on the Internet, currently refered to as "Anshe$". Most components are already in place since 2 months and functional.

Features of this currency system:

o Value backed by silver Euro held by ANSHECHUNG Studios, Ltd.
o Central payment server that seemlessly ties into content vendor devices in Second Life and any other platform accessible via XMLRPC
o Full integration with Second Life land sale system
o Full integration with PayPal automatic debit
o Web interface and integration with major SL related shopping websites
o Online currency exchange market vs. US$, EUR and GBP

Since we have no interest in competing with Linden Lab we currently do not plan to introduce this currency and hope that the Linden$ will eventually become one stable and reliable currency.

However, considering currency devalution losses of more than 5000 US$ during the past 2 weeks, if the L$ drops further and reaches one level below 3 US$ per 1000 L$ (1:333) we would face insurmountable economic pressure to switch land sales, rentals and content sales to one more stable currency platform and offer the same opportunity to every other business in Second Life.

Well, this has my stamp of a approval...

Feel free to. I won't be participating. Anshe$ aren't good enough for my products.

if the L$ drops further and reaches one level below 3 US$ per 1000 L$ (1:333), i will be willing to use Anshe$ instead of L$ and L$ will worth 0 in all of my businesses.

No thanks. I will only accept Lindens or USD as payment for items I have up for sale.


If I am not mistaken, "Value backed by silver Euro held by ANSHECHUNG Studios, Ltd." is illegal in the US. So no I will not have any part of this.

I will continue to support Linden Labs and not ANSHECHUNG Studios, Ltd for as long as I am able.

It's definetely an interesting concept; but at the end of the day, if your going to use another currency in SL, I think the best currency to use is going to be USD; just as long as someone can solve the fees (and tax) issue with handling micropayments.

The next hurdle of course, is getting people to use it; and lowering barriers to use (like providing hooks into the SL interface).

I'd love to see some competition in SL currencies

too funny!

though I think it ought to be in a classifieds forum somewhere.

And btw, the term "Anshe$" has been in generic use for quite some time, and derivitives of such as "An$he" and "An$$$he". Won't this cause confusion?

Maybe Japanese Yen is better because 1 usd worths aprx 118 yen, so it will solve micropayments.

One feature I forgot mention:

o Automatic monthly, weekly or daily cashout in US$, EUR or GBP via PayPal mass payment to sellers at current currency rates
o Automatic creation of transaction history sent via e-mail

very nicely worded takeover ploy, or attmepted threat to Linden. I have a question, how many ppl did you have posting trying to get LL to do away with stipend? I think the actual issue here is the fact that ppl with Linden tier actually get a stipend while those in AnsheChung tier do not and the cost is identical for both tiers. All you would succeed in doing by slowly getting ppl to use your currency is further and faster devaluation of the L market. The unfortunate thing is unless one is buying on Anshe land, and/or from ppl who use such, Anshe dollars are and always will be worthless to the rest of us. Land transactions with Linden labs are in L's not Anshe's. Most goods purchased are purchased with L's NOT Anshe's. and finally, unless AnsheChung.com takes over Linden labs nd Second Life, Anshe's would do me no good as I make trasnactions strictly with those on Linden land and never if I can help it do I set FOOT on any anshe owned sim. Try again. Sooner or later you'll find the magic combination to take it all over for yourself, but by then I won't be subsidizing your economy because with you at the helm no way would I stay in second life. Until that time, or until I decide otherwise I am in Second Life for the duration, however under NO cricumstances with alternate currency be accepted in my businesses as I have to pay my bills in Linden, not Anshe monopoly money.

You know, that's not a bad idea at all. Korean Won is probably even better since it runs very close to 1 USD=1000. (976 at time of posting)

The problem with micropayments is however, there's usually fixed fees involved in transfers (for instance, with credit cards, it's usually 25c + 2.5%), those fixed fees mean you have to do your transactions in bulk sums.

Plus there's the tax & legal issues, running a 'currency' means you need to have some extremely good accountants and lawyers on hand to avoid running afoul of anything.

Although i dont like the name Anshe$(no offense A$ is better i think), i still like the idea, if one day i have to do this,
-> people who buy lands from me will have to use A$ instead of L$
-> my renters will have to use A$ instead of L$
-> Still i will need some L$ to upload textures and for classifieds and for slexchange(maybe u can deal with them too).

I don't use PayPal. After all the rip offs that have occured I don't trust PayPal. Which leads to the question how are you going to pay people who do not/will not/can not use PayPal?

She may as well try saying she'll back it with Kruggerands.LOL

Check or wire

I'm not even gonna pretend to be any kind of economist here, armchair or otherwise (christ knows we have enough of 'em) but if I'm not mistaken, the US mint has already solved the problem of micropayments quite admirably with a technology they call "pennies". There are like 100 of them to the dollar! All the time!

I don't use any kind of transaction devices such as paypal as anyone knows that short of using anonymous gift cards, PayPal is insecure, as are any online transactions involving the use of any kind of personal account numbers or information. Also I don't care if you say I can trade them in for my grandmother's gold teeth. My rent is through someone with Linden tier using Lindens. Anshe bux having no value in Lindens means if I accepted same I'd be sitting on a pile of something useless to me. May as well sell diamonds IRL for newspaper clippings as they will spend about as well. Again since I don't do business on your land or with your people ( I am blond however I am not that st00pid) then this "currency" is both quite useless and quite valueless to me as a whole. Bye bye Anshe. There's still one person who is not quite blind enough to be led down your garden path.

A check?? Nope sorry. No guarantees it won't bounce or even be accepted by my bank. Wire?? I don't give out that kind of personal information to people I don't know and I certainly don't give out my account numbers especially online.

Anything requiring the use of any personal account numbers is subject to identity theft with liability all running on the victim nd no chance of recovery of anything stolen. Probably the reason my preferred method of stimulting the economy is finding good products IN WORLD and purchasing them from deserving content creators. Not people who sit about daily trying to figure out ways to just take money for nothing.

Besides, as I stated my bills in world are all in L's. Anshe bux would do me no good as while you may own a lot of sims and servers within second life, Linden labs still owns second life. If they fold you fold right along with them. Your currency once again has no value to me as I don't speculate in the money market trying to find the easy way out. I work for a living thank you.

So you never buy online and never subscribe to anything online ?
Well... you refuse paypal, check, wire, ... what else ?
Are you willing to find a solution, or just post here because being against Anshe's business is "cool" ?

I rarely buy online and when I do I use an AmerExpress Gift Card. I don't subscribe to anything online. I am this way because I know there really is no such thing as a completely secure online transaction. I have no cash to spare so I am not willing to risk losing what little I do have.

I have never thought it "cool" to be against Anshe's business. I refuse to do business with her for reasons of my own.

This will go the same way as the protest against p2p and the 'land sales' thing of a couple of weeks ago, both of which rode off into the sunset never to be heard of again.

Rather than making another problem, why not try and solve the existing one - if in fact it needs fixing (which I don't believe it does).

So... let's look at this 'alternative' from a logical point of view.

I want to buy something from a store. The store has to have twice the vendors - a price in L$ and a price in A$. That means prim limits become a problem, so the store has to buy more land (nice concept, makes you more money through the backdoor forcing people to buy more of your land).

Next problem is if a store only accepts A$. Does that mean I have to set up an account, buy some A$, and no doubt because a minimum amount per transaction will be in place, I'll have to buy A$1000 when I only need A$200 for the item. The rest sits in my A$ account wasted because I can't cash out the A$800 again. Nice one, deposits with no way to use them. What would I - and most people do? Say "stuff it" and go to another store.

No doubt there will be a L$ / A$ exchange somewhere too. Great, I want to cash out my A$25,000 - but instead of cashing straight out to US$, do I cash out via L$ and get a better deal? Whichever happens, I then pay a fee to cash out from US$ balance to real cash, then exchange from US$ to UK£. So my A$ have lost half their value in exchange fees by the time I end up getting them in my hand.

Whilst I can understand this as a concept for a small, self contained roleplaying community (Neualtenberg is one that springs to mind, perhaps also some of the Gorean servers) I see it as entirely impractical for SL as a whole to have more than one currency in use.

What am I supposed to do if someone comes to my store with only A$, and I only use L$? I can either have to get involved in something I don't wish to, and have an amount of cash tied up in A$ which is of no use to me, or more lilkely just lose a potential customer by a sensible (and entirely justified) refusal to deal with an unofficial, external, unregulated, closed, and possibly also illegal, currency.

Everyone loses, except Anshecorp.

Lewis

Anshechung is a company (afaik).
You have the same right to protect yourself against this company (privacy, theft, ...) than against any other company.




Are we talking about a way to stimulate the economy ?
No but... anyway... it's YOUR way to stimulate a company, fine. Do it, i'm sure it's good.
On my way, i think SecondLife need BIG project too. Big project require a lot of money, call that an investment. Considering some RL fact, i don't give a sh*t to US$ and i give less to L$. I'll be very happy if a SL currency was based on EUR, and not USD.
Anshechung is big enough and i trust his company, a lot more than Ginko

The only problem i notice is there is no way to directly pay a script (vendor, or anything else) in A$ instead of L$.

Question to Anshe, is there a way to convert L$<->A$ directly ?