Second Life and Virtual Worlds
When it comes to currency exchange Americans tend to be ignorant of how it works. Europeans that travel are much more knowledgeable, at least in my experience. That knowledge difference seems to have led to some conspiracy theories about the recent price of Linden dollars.
The image is the list of pending buy and sell orders placed in the Lindex market as of 9AM PT 5/24.
This Sunday morning I am going reading blogs and forums to see what is going on in Second Life. The interesting things I am finding follow:
Honour has images of Alice is Wonderland [SIC]. See: SL10BCC, Jumping Down the Rabbit Hole in Second Life. It is a region that is as strange and odd as the original story conveys and Honour does a good job of capturing that in her photos.
Maria Korolov on Hypergrid Business post more about the ongoing saga of the L$ Exchanges. See: Linden Lab allows third-party currency sales. Maria sees this as the Lab reversing their position. I don’t.
All exchanges MUST buy their Lindens from the LindeX. People can then buy those L$ from the Exchanges. But, in reality these will no longer be ‘exchanges’ as no one will be able to take money out of SL EXCEPT through the LindeX.
So, the exchanges are now only retailers of L$. It looks like many people will still have a significant problem getting money out of SL. This is of course the whole point of FinCEN regulations.
There is a question and discussion in the SL Forum about: Any solution for cashing out in Euro with LindeX?
There is a new post on the Second Life™ blog announcing: More Options for Buying Linden Dollars. Quoting: With a credit card, you can purchase L$ on the LindeX using 27 different currencies, including EUR, GBP, JPY, and AUD. If you don’t have a credit card, you can also use PayPal, which can be connected directly … Read more
There is still a huge amount of speculation going on in regard to the ToS change and the Lab’s issuing Cease and Desist emails to those operating L$ exchanges and building viewers that link to third party exchanges.
In one thread over on SLUniverse the participants are trying to figure out why third party exchanges are suddenly illegal. They aren’t illegal. But, they do violate the Lab’s ToS… may be. That is where the confusion is, the ToS.
The recent ToS change left some questions as to whether third parties could continue trading Lindens. A subsequent post on the SL Blog seems to equate “unauthorized” with Not Permitted.
The kicker is the emails being sent to the operators of Exchanges. One German operator (Milz Yue) posted on a forum:
As described on the Second Life blog, updated Second Life Terms of Service disallow trading of Linden dollars (L $) on exchanges other than the LindeX.
As operator of a third party to exchange, You Should cease Facilitating L$ trades on your exchange immediately to comply with the Terms of Service. Any virtual ‘ATMs’ or scripted objects in Second Life that are connected to your exchange should therefore be removed immediately.
Please be sure to read the complete updated Second Life Terms of Service and take the steps Necessary to comply and keep your Second Life account (s) in good standing.
Thank you in advance for your cooperation.
That may not be a perfect translation. But, it seems to make it clear, Linden Lab will be the only currency exchange in Second Life.
For those doing business in Second Life the Currency Exchange is a tool that can improve their profit margin when they are taking L$ out of world to RL currencies. One just has to understand how it works, which is what this Second Life Currency Exchange Tutorial is about.
If you are a resident that just needs a few Linden dollars on occasional bases to purchase something, you can still gain from understanding how the Currency Exchange works and knowing what it is and how to use it. You won’t need some of the more esoteric information I’ll provide. Knowing the basics will save you a few L$.
XStreetSL has a Currency Exchange, which is now owned by Linden Lab. This is a place where you can easily buy and sell L$ as well as other stuff. It is a fun place to shop also and has loads of free stuff. There is no StreetSL fee for moving funds between SL and PayPal. Using PayPal is the only way to take cash out of XStreetSL. URL: https://www.xstreetsl.com/