Brady Forrest's take on Linden dollars as a micropayment device.

At the current "exchange rate" of L$265 to the dollar, extremely small fractions of a dollar can be exchanged in game, without any transaction fee. Compare that to the paypal $0.05 minimum transaction fee, or typical credit card minimums on the order of a dollar. The same reason the Kwikie Mart doesn't accept cards for transactions smaller than $5 is the same reason it's impossible at the moment to charge a reasonable sub dollar or sub cent fee for online content.

See also time Murtaugh's discussion on the topic:
http://o2b.net/archives/second-l...

Submitted by jason - 2007-07-25 21:20:50
Channels - general online metaverse
Tags - secondlife micropayment linden

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Total volume of Linden dollars: 2,608,448,990
At the current exchange rate of L$265 to $1, this is roughly $9.8 million.

Cash flow:
Last month, there were 42,597 avatars with an increasing balance. 132 of them were earning over $5000 a month. The graph is very bottom heavy, with most users making less than $10. No mention is made of users with a negative cash flow.

Transaction size:
Most transactions are for small amounts under L$500 ($1.88). I'd venture to guess most of these are texture uploads that cost L$10 ($0.038) or small L$2 camping transactions ($0.008). There were 856 transactions over L$1,000,000 ($3,773).

Submitted by jason - 2007-07-25 20:04:09
Channels - metaverse
Tags - virtual money secondlife economy micropayment linden

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