Any thoughts on the Slexchange Currency Exchange?

I just noticed that Slexchange has opened its currency exchange and is in Beta. Anyone have any thoughts on it? Thinking of giving it a try to see how it works out.

Seems to be low volumes at the moment and so not sure if thats because it hasn't been annouced or its having difficulties competing against Lindex. Trying to understand the fee structure at the moment and the trading fees which is some kind of pip system.

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Sorry, I was talking about that other exchange.

ive used them. mostly because i dont care for my other choices. i lost $8 going with them, but it was quick and painless.

I've been watching, but from what I can see there seem to have only been two or three transactions over the whole three or four days, and at unreal price so might even just be the admin testing.

And the "6 pips" method of charging is a bit obscure. Just exactly how do we interpret the double graph, and does the list of outstanding orders conceal or expose the 6 pips difference?

I guess I could suss it out if I really applied my mind, but at present it looks to me like its failing very badly on the communication front (only about 12 hours history, and only a graph). Unless it pulls its socks up I think it'll fail.

I put up a sell order, out in front of all the others, but nothing happened over a day and I couldnt really understand what was going on, if anything, so I withdrew it.

To cap it all, the whole site seems to have been down for 50% of the last 36 hours, unless I'm unlucky in trying at isolated bad moments. What gives ? It's down now, for instance.

If it goes under, doubtless we'll hear endless cries of how it couldn't compete with wicked monopolist LL. But that won't be the reason. Right now its crap. But I guess its only beta, and it might yet flower into something wonderful. I'm watching and waiting and hoping, because I believe in choice and competition. But it has to be much much better.

Oh curses. I'd forgotten. It belongs to Anshe, doesn't it? She'll think I'm showing antagonism again. Nothing further from my mind. I'd like it to succeed. Ah well, its my unbiassed opinion. Contrary view, someone, quick ?

To play devil's advocate, Ellie, I haven't used the yet however I was trying to sell some L$ on LindeX for my land-tier fees and it took a couple days for it to finally be sold - and the market (again I've only been looking at Lindex for this since GOM is no more) seems to be tapering off/slowing down... I've noticed any time there is a major (read:buggy) update and things start to "fall apart", confidence in the platform wavers, the currency market shrivels and people seem to buy less inworld content, until LL gets everything worked out and then things start to return to "normal". Hah, "normal". Hah.

The currency market at SL Exchange is currently in open beta, and the money being traded is real. Just yesterday there was somewhere around $800 US traded. We have not made a public announcement about it yet, and do not plan to until all the necessary pieces are in place. This includes extensive charting, automated USD withdrawals and complete documentation.

We are working on documentation now that should help to explain the spread and graph. It's actually very simple and easier to calculate than standard commissions, because there are no commissions to calculate! In short, there is no munging of numbers - we simply add a "spread" in so orders fill at different prices.

For example, a sell order at 250 will not match a buy order at 250. It matches a buy order at 244, and then SL Exchange keeps the difference in price.

The double graph is also simple. The high is the sell rate and the low is the buy rate.

This is how real-world currency markets operate. See http://fxtrade.oanda.com for a great example.

I really like the idea of this currency exchange...please don't forget to announce it when you're ready!

I worry that fraudsters will sell on SLExchange at a lower price and honest users will buy on SLExchange and sell the laundered L$ on SL.

Basically, the L$ will be devalued as we underwrite people who are farming the stipend.

I beileve that SLExchange should be required to share all transaction information with LindenLabs and that they should cancel any accounts as determined by lindenlabs.

Otherwise, stipend farmers are getting a free ride on the value that we create.

The L$ is currently overvalued anyway. By setting the account price and stipend levels as they have, LL is implicitly encouraging people to register alts as a means of getting more L$ for their primary.

As it is, I'm certain the only reason the exchange rate has remained at L$250:US$1 for the past few weeks is that LL's market has an incredible amount of friction, which is causing buyers to pay more than they otherwise would have had to. As soon as another open buy/sell market opens up, the exchange rate will begin to move back to where it was (and theoretically should be).

And, anyway, stipend farmers aren't getting a free ride. They're just buying currency from LL instead of other users.

I worry that isn't the case.

If you are getting paid 500 L$ + 50 L$ per week per CC# you sign up with, that could be 2$ / CC#, plus another 1$ every 5 weeks. Basically, you're doing nothing except leveraging stolen CC numbers and then selling the L$ gamed on 3rd party websites to escape detection.

People are going to arbitrage the two markets and basically launder L$ for these stipend farmers.

Credit card fraud is a whole other issue, which I obviously don't condone. Legitimate usage of alts, on the other hand, is a valid (and LL-provided) means of financing your Second Life.

Well, the 5 accounts per household limit is clumsy and awkward and I doubt it is rarely (if ever) legitimately farmed for stipend.

For the people who can afford and are thoughtful to invest 360$ year for L$, I doubt that

a) they want to wait every week for their next 2500 L$
b) they want to have to log onto various accounts to access it
c) really care about the L$ discount versus just buying it off of lindex
d) are unconcerned about the risk that their L$ might be worthless in year

So, I doubt anyone legitimately does the 5 account per household.

I suppose it's possible that people are gaming the system and buying more than 5 accounts, but that is purely against the TOS and is grounds for account termination I suspect.

Having more accounts than 5 can lead to a lot more problems then just stipend farming, it also allows for massive types of inworld fraud as well which I wont' get into except to say that it would undermine our world if people were able to do that.

So, this leaves en-masse stipend farming, that is the sum of all those premium accounts for all those different people.

This I see as a credible possibility. While no individual is farming the stipend, I can see the sum of all accounts farming it.

The currency exchange is open.

Please see the announcement here:
http://www.slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=1277

If you want to arbitrage between the two it's 3.5% (lindex) + 4% (paypal charge!?) + 2% slexchange spread.

That's 9.5% you have to add before breaking even on an arbitrage trade.

If you use mass pay deposit (not advised) you can reduce that to %5.5 + 1$ However, you are probably going to piss paypal off and risk your account. Mass pay is meant for mass pay not one off avoidance of paypal fees. Not something I'm ever going to do, that's for sure.

I'm pretty stunned that Apotheus is risking his account like this.

So, if you put in a buy order at 253+9.5% on SLExchange, or 277 you should be able to break even on a sell out via SL, assuming SL implements mass pay (which apparently is right around the corner).

So, put in a buy order for 285, and that'll give you a healthy profit with SL (again, assuming mass pay makes it through QA)

Will anyone sell at that rate? Not sure.

I think it will be those people who are desperate to launder their L$ without having to go through Lindex.l

Keep in mind this is only if you sell L$ on LindeX, withdraw your USD funds (withdrawal processing fee notwithstanding), and deposit them to SLX to purchase more L$. Due to the various fees between the two services, this would be considerably cheaper if done the other way around (assuming the markets dictate a profit is possible).


What makes you think that anyone is risking their accounts? There is nothing in the PayPal User Agreement that dictates the purpose of this type of funds transfer beyond their standard Acceptable Use Policy, which SL Exchange operates squarely within. However, I have noticed that the Mass Pay feature is still in development (it just changed slightly about a week ago), so perhaps that will change soon. If it does, we'll make whatever change is necessary so as not to violate their rules.

Anyways, there is probably a better chance of arbitrage with IGE if you can navigate their rules to buy and sell large amounts.

Right. But Lindex has proven rather stable. Buying L$ at a discount on Lindex is going to be pretty challenging, and I'm talking from a pure arbitrage point of view here. Buy low, sell high. I think you can buy low on SLexchange and sell high on lindex. I don't see it happening the other way around, nothing personal.



You're right, I can't find anything in Google/Paypal.

But, let's face it, it's quite possible (and likely) they'll make a policy against this kind of gaming and if you don't hear about it because you're busy at your day job.. Do you really want to get caught with your pants down?

I guess I'm just saying I wouldn't risk this personally, but my paypal account is more important to me than anything, so I'm a little overly cautious.



Thanks for the tip. But, I wouldn't write off Lindex just yet. You may be suprised if Lawrence decides to keep people off of the business tier structures.

SLExchange market seems to work nicely. I had several orders filled last night, selling about 200K L$.

Pardon me, perhaps I'm just so new I came down with yesterdays rain, but...are we talking about? Free account alts???

Free account alts get L$50 per week! At the current US$ excange rate that's about 20 FREAKING CENTS. Who in their right mind is going to try and farm 20 cents per week using free alts? What do they do? Make 100 alts so they can earn a wopping US$20 per week from the money exchange? That seems just so...pathetic.

Now I'm even more confused...

You're saying that, say, 100 account holders could possibly be pooling their weekly stipend and selling it? After they split the profits they, individually, wouldn't get squat out of it...I fail to see what the point would be. Nevertheless, who cares what 100...or even 1000...account holders do with their stipend? If they don't sell it themselves then it just gets spent in game and some entreprenuer turns around and sells it...like Anshe. (Not dissing you Anshe, personally I find absolutely NOTHING wrong with what you do.)

The market takes care of all of this anyway, LL carefully balances L$ sources and sinks.

Anyone that finds a way of efficiently playing the two exchanges will eventually cause a re-balancing between them that will negate any serious profit for the time spent at it.

You can only get one free account. They are talking about upgrading the accounts to premium which gets you $500 per week. Reread post #13 (in fact the whole thread) as you seemed to have missed the $360 which would be the annual cost of 5 premium accounts.

Btw, an account which doesn't spending its stipend to buy items or services is not an uncommon occurence and I'm not just talking about alt accounts.

OK...

500/week for a month is around US$10...I'd hardly consider that farming especially after you pay the monthly fee. We're just NOT talking about a lot of money here.

This has been discussed extensively in other threads, but I'll repeat the summary here for completeness...

5 premium account @ $72/year = $360
Stipend received by those accounts = L$130,000

Naively calculated breakeven point = L$130,000/$360 = L$361/US$ ($3.05/L$1,000)

If the exchange rate is kept close to $4/L$1,000 then you're making over $130 in profit over the course of a year. That's a ROI of over 40% per year, just by registering the accounts and selling the stipend. $130 may not be a lot a lot in absolute terms, but it's a very good relative return.