Darren Shaw [05.19.06 12:16 PM]

Interesting. I wonder if people will also start using SL as a portable reputation system, so that you could have a single in game reputation which would be useful across different (non-game) sites.

  Andrew Odewahn [05.19.06 02:21 PM]

Based on exchange rates reported at OANDA.com, I bet the people of Armenia, Costa Rica, Laos, Romania, Sudan and Iraq had the folks at Linden Labs running their central bank...

• 
  1 US Dollar = 442.000 Armenian Dram
  
• 
  

1 US Dollar = 528.380 Costa Rican Colon


• 
  1 US Dollar = 10,379.0 Lao Kip
  


• 
  1 US Dollar = 2,272.30 Sudanese Pound
  


• 
  1 US Dollar = 1,531.30 Iraqi Dinar
  

  Chris Yeh [05.19.06 03:49 PM]

Genius, Brady! I think you're absolutely right that this seems like a fairly viable solution to the micropayments issue.

The interesting question is why such transactions are cost-effective for Linden Lab to support, in comparison to the banks and PayPals of the world.

  Benjamin Holzman [05.19.06 07:25 PM]

There are probably many reasons, Chris, but an obvious one is that the banks and paypals of the world have a lot of overhead to guarantee (and *prove* to auditors, which is probably more expensive) that the chances of them making an error of economic significance is sufficiently low. Redundant data centers, security, surveillance, SOX compliance, etc...

  Ice [05.19.06 10:30 PM]

The large volume of 0.007 to 0.063 range is due to the placement of upload costs for textures and inworld animations at 10 Linden Dollars, or roughly in that range, given the exchange rate of 300:1 (varies) is 3 cents. Thus a large part of these numbers are actually currency going through a Linden Lab designed sink, and thus out of the economy.

Almost all this data details payments for items that are only usable in Second Life.

  Paul Browne [05.20.06 06:00 AM]

Is there an API to be able to buy and sell in Linden Dollars from other systems? Probably not , but does anybody know of an unofficial mashup somewhere?

If Flickr can morph from something else entirely into a photo-sharing site, then perhaps something similar can come out of Second life? It also has the advantage that it has no reputation to lose (unlike Paypal or Visa) if you lose your micropayments - it's only setup as a game , not a bank!

  Claus [05.27.06 06:27 AM]

The language in the bottom graph is a little misleading since it is not in fact "the dollar volume" i.e. the percentage of dollars - but the transaction volume.
Since the brackets are quite open it's a little harder to get a good sense of the dollar volume - but it's somewhere between $2.7 mio and $10 mio.
In dollar terms the bulk of the transactions are actually at the high end - and the 'long tail' of Linden dollars is quite small.

  trent.katsu [06.30.06 04:47 AM]

The reason is that the initial reansfer of USD is for more than a single dollar. USD transfers to your account are held by LL until you use them as payment or until you convert them to LD.

Of, note, SLBOUTIQUE.com sells real world and Second life product for USD or LD. Right now, you can buy software from them using only Lindens as payment.

  Icard Beck [09.20.07 05:58 AM]

I need 2000 linden, can u help me or help me 2 get a job in SL?

  Romman [05.05.08 03:42 PM]

tuiXo offers a micropayment solution for Latin American second life residents...

They can add linden dollars to their accounts in Second Life by just sending an SMS with their unique MemberID (assigned inworld by just clicking a tuiXo kiosk)

Visit tuiXo.com for details..