New competition for the Lindex !

I fail to see how LLab running a currency exchange is going to take away ownership of our economy away from us.

So people can't day-trade anymore? Oh well. Nothing quite like exploitation of a non-liquid market.

If anything, this is going to be a major boon for the economy, especially that nebulous, evil group known as "content creators".

If only 5% of people were using GOM, and driving the economy that much, imagine 10% (an easily acheivable number, given that LLab has access to 100% of the population).

Now imagine 20%.

50%?

If you have 10 times the amount of people buying and selling money, suddenly the economy has a lot more oomph to it; no longer is it relegated to the back offices of small , elite businesses and frantic day-traders making a few cents here and there. Now it's in the hands of anyone that wants to buy or sell a little bit of money.

That's power. That's in our hands. That's a Good Thing.

LF

"*****"

I think day trading and other forms of speculation is still going to occur on any exchange. People were already speculating by buying up large amounts of L$ before GOM closed and were preparing to speculate on the new markets.

And I think opening up the exchange concept to the whole of the SL community means that there will be more trading rather then less. So day trading won't go away, I think it will just mutate into a new form to take advantage of the new market's foibles.

Is this still in the testing face or should it be running already? Because i ordered some L$ yesterday and i still haven't recieved them. So actually i'm getting quite nervous...

But what is LL real mission here? Are they a platform provider? Or are they just another Metaverse? Should LL be running these kind of exchanges, or should the 3rd parties be running them? What should be run by LL and what should be run by the 3rd party? What about shopping? Should LL take over that too? Or how about land renting? Maybe LL should be running that too? Where is the line? Who controls what, and for how long?

GOM was a small share of the market, but how many of those other people, that weren't "avtive" traders would have bought and sold L$ if it was easier? I bet most of the people that wanted to buy and sell L$ did, and except for the new players, which should have been told about 3rd party sites, would know how to buy and sell L$.

Ok so it seems to me any 3rd party exchange would have to pretty much loose any transaction fee or make it very small, and sell $L very cheap to be successful over the ease of LL's version?

I agree, I think many more people will be willing to buy $L if it's easier for them and that will increase the demand for $L which will allow the value to go up. This applies of course to those who didn't buy and sell because they didn't want to put their financial info in yet another person's hands...those who do not buy because they don't want to spend any more $$ on their "game" probably won't care either way.

Third parties are inherently untrustworthy. I don't want to give my paypal/credit information/RL information to everyone with a SL last name, purporting to be running currency exchanges. The potential for fraud increases with every currency exchange running out of LLab's hands. And when someone gets fucked over? They come to LLab, of course, but they can't do anything, because they have no control over the credit information that the person gave to the untrusted third party.

I already gave my credit card information to LLab; ergo, I trust them.



At this early stage of platform development, my opinion is thus:

1) Real money/real world info: LLab.
2) SL money/SL info: residents

To be honest, I don't trust anyone but myself. That's just how it is. Identity theft is rampant in this country, and the less people know about me in the rea world, the better.




Many folks don't join SL because it requires a credit card. People get jittery when they give credit information to a company they've never heard of.

Whereas they're usually a lot more receptive to buying products and using services from a company they already inherently trust.

when you join SL, you give them your credit card info. You trust them. Therefore, you're much more likely to use their currency market, rather than giving it to 2 guys in a basement.

LF

Precisely my point about LL using unfair tactics.. They could just as easily have created a very simple API that ALL 3rd party vendors, whether currency, goods or services could have used to directly charge a users SL account.

They chose to create their own exchange instead. I predict that next will be a web based shopping site that directly charges to your SL account, linked direct from the browser.

When you shop on the internet, you give out your info to companies. Why do you trust them? You gave your info to LL, why do you trust them?

On a side note, Tom and Jamie where not just 2 guys in a basement. GOM was a fully registered company, with a real address, and real people running it. You could claim the Microsoft was just 2 guys running a business out of a garage. But look what they became. If LL really wants Second Life to be the "next internet" then they can be running things like exchanges, shopping site, and the like. They must just be a hosting company, and maybe a devoloper. Anything more, and I feel they will never achive what they state they want to achive.

No offesne to Tom and Jamie because I think they're good guys who provided a great service, but they were doing this as a hobby, part time, and when push came to shove they folded. When one player run business has such a large affect on the economy (for both good and ill) and can at any time just decide they don't feel like doing it anymore... what more solid proof do you need that something this important NEEDS to be done by LL? By handling this the way that they did, GOM showed us exactly why LL made the choice to create their own in house exchange.

Currency can be either run by SL or an independant, growth oriented company like IGE. Money is seldom left to hobbyists or people who do it part time, however good and innovative they may be, like GOM was.

It takes ten bucks and a PO Box to become a "real business".

Anyways, I have to agree with chip, the power that two hobbyists had over the entirety of the SL economy was nothing short of mildly scary. At any moment they could have (but didn't, obviously) pull such shenanigans that the economy might have never recovered.

That is why we need LLab "intervention". We need some stable bedrock with which to build a grand new economy, or whatever.

LF

Remember though, that the pushing and shoving came from LL itself, and they're the biggest kid on the block. Tough to go up against someone who can arbitrarily boot you from the game ("Linden reserves the right to delete or change any Account ID or Avatar Name for any reason or no reason" when the mood suits them.

It's not like we just woke up one morning and decided to bail on SL. We were happily moving along, supporting the economy, working on new features, and nearing the point where GOM would be generating enough revenue to support either Jamie or myself working on it full-time. The decision to pull out of SL was made after LL took steps to implement their own listing service, and completely discounted our advice on how to proceed. Their motivation was ostensibly to enable new players to more easily purchase currency -- which doesn't really follow, given the age restrictions on trading currently in place in their market.

If they had followed our advice (explained in excruciating detail through emails and phone calls) and implemented the suggested API (or at least provided a reasonable argument as to why their listing service would be better than a community-wide API), we wouldn't be having this conversation.

Took about $200 to set up mine and that was the cheapest legal register I could find. Plus I can't use a PO Box as by law you need to have your business name outside your door, preferably in Brass. I even have to pay Companies House to submit my annual returns and accounts, just for hte privilege to own the company.

The only advantage is that being your own company is more tax efficient and you can claim back VAT.

Definitely in the wrong country, seems theres less laws to cover businesses over there.

That is just not true. Look what happened when GOM did close, SLex is there setting up their own exchange. I know that others had been working on market type echanges, they where even ready to go up agaist GOM, but then LL contacted them and they reliased that is was pointless to go against LL. IGE, AC, and all the other exchanges would have still been there. GOM was not the only game in town. If they did pull the plug and LL was not setting up an exchange, nothing would have changed. There would have been no economic impact, SL would not crash and burn. Not down palying what Tom and Jamie did, but they just had the best system, not the only.

IGE isn't an exchange, their business strategy boils down to "hoard low, sell overly high". They do NOT have a fluid market. Everything is manually done through them (waiting for "couriers", and changes in price can take days to reflect a new exchange rate on a more fluid market.

furthermore, they routinely shut down their currency buying when they're "overstocked", thus shutting yet another avenue of money conversion.

AnsheChung, if I'm not mistaken, only deals in large amounts. No 7-8k here, 100k and up. Not really fair for people not pulling down $400 a month. Also, she's not a money market either.



Are you kidding me? when the market slipped 12 cents, people nearly shit themselves. If the market went BOOM without a replacement, there would be an economic crisis.

Probably not bad for the 80% of people who don't give a crap about currency conversion (ie consumers who just spend their stipend), but to the folks that actually depend on it for RL income, it's a big deal.

IGE and Anshe != replacement for GOM. They weren't even competition.

LF

I will grant that IGE and AC were not true exchanges, but they did deal with the trading of money. When GOM slipped, so did AC and IGE. What would have changed? Nothing. Anshe sells in smaller chunks, but I think currently she only buys in large amounts. IGE would also buy in small amounts. The spread would have been higher, but all that ment is more room for another company to come in a fill the void. As SL grows, more and more exchange services would have come up. In the begining was there not just GOM? Then IGE came in, then AC, Hank had an exchange, SLex had an exchange, and I am sure there are more I missed. Other would have stepped up to the plate, and would have filled the void. It may have been a little bumpy for a short time, but it would have had no long term effect on the economy of SL.

Yes, it appears to be in the early testing phase and many are also seeing the same troubles with LindeX. I had asked if LL intended to make good on any transactions that their new exchange failed to consummate, but I've not gotten a reponse.

I think your concern would be a very valid query on "Hotline to Linden".

So, it sounds to me like you don't think LL's replacement market will help content creators very much at all, considering that we already have about 15% of active avatars registered with us, and you're estimating only 20% of SL residents care about RL<->SL currency trading...

Well, I would wager a fair amount of people don't care because they don't know

Once it becomes "part of the world" when/if LL ever decides to integrate it into the client (coming soon, Summer of 2034), it'll get wider and wider adoption.

Ricky, in your shoes I might have reacted exactly the same way and done exactly the same thing. I was disappointed with how the whole thing went down but I don't feel it's really fair for me to try and judge one way or the other since I wasn't party to the negotiations or LL's internal discussions. I'm not at all happy that you guys feel that the rug was pulled out from under you and I can empathize. I've used GOM faithfully since its inception. There are any number of SL business's that could be rendered obsolete by simple feature or policy changes. I myself have had a couple hundred hours of work go down the tubes due to changes I didn't see coming. Those are the risks we take.

I think a reasonable argument for why LL chose to go this route rather than an API is pretty easy to come up with. I think it comes down to control and liability. If LL is charging people's credit cards for transactions that it has to depend on third parties to fulfill they are in a position of being liable for actions over which they have no control. It's not hard to imagine their lawyers shaking their heads and saying "uh, no. Bad idea."

Didn't mean to sound hostile toward you, Chip.

The main point was that the transaction flow we proposed and documented would be something like:

1) user requests a price quote through SL.com or the interface
2) LL pokes every registered exchange for a price quote
3) the prices from any markets that respond to the query will be presented to the user
4) user chooses whichever price she likes
5) LL bills user's credit card (adding whatever fees the like)
6) LL automatically transfers L$ from seller's mule account to buyer
7) LL reconciles cash payment with registered markets at the end of the week/month

Simple. Same net effect for the end-user. LL would be in charge of all cash and L$ transfers, so no dependency on the reliability of external parties. They wouldn't have had to develop their own market software. And the API would work for any style of L$ reseller (GOM-type market, IGE-type reseller). It would be a piece of cake to add in instant sales through the interface as well. And let's not forget the good karma.

Please refrain from personally attacking those you do not agree with, but remember, per the Forum Guidelines, we will edit "aggressively offensive personal attacks" but language, such as "fraud, liar, cheater, griefer, troller, jerk, scam artist" etc is strongly discouraged, but will not be removed.

Who cares. Lets go back bash some resident business. Hitting soft targets is so much more fun than messing up with real problems! I predict as long as people on these forums fight each other nothing will ever change.

That makes sense. You'd act as a listing service and no longer have to facilitate the actual exchange. I guess the only thing LL would be liable for outside of their direct control would be the accuracy of the listing. I could still see LL's legal department being uneasy with that, but it counters my previous reasoning somewhat. Thanks for explaining.

Personally I'm hoping that after LL's exchange has been up and running for a while and we all know what its drawbacks are that you guys will come back with GOM 2.0 and blow it out of the water