how to make a million dollars

if you compare the feature-set of linden lab’s second life grid and the various open source grids – only one serious difference emerges: the economy.

linden lab provides a robust, secure, easily accessible means for transferring small amounts of money between its users – and the effects of this fabulous tool are evident EVERYWHERE in second life.

the opensim grids are hard pressed to compete in this regard – their decentralized nature makes it almost impossible to develop a similar system – make it secure – and implement fraud-safe ways of converting virtual dollars to real dollars.

but the almost impossible has been done.

bitcoin.

bitcoin is quite revolutionary. at least as important, i’d say, as the invention of email or the world-wide-web. it is essentially digital gold that requires absolutely no central agency to trade, over which no central agency has control.

world-shattering implications aside – it is the PERFECT solution for creating an economy on the opensim grids. the viewer acts as your wallet, and exchanges bitcoins with the seller’s wallet. done.

so how do you make that million dollars? well, you go and implement the bitcoin wallet in a third party viewer and the proper hooks for opensim.

or, you can do like i did and go buy some bitcoins. $1000 bitcoins two years ago are worth $1,000,000 today.

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published:: 5.21.11 / 11am

topic:: second life

Maria Korolov 5.23.11 / 11am

Qarl —

There’s also OMC, which is a multi-grid currency from Virwox.

bitcoin, due to its peer-to-peer nature, poses some potential difficulties for business use — in many ways, it is similar to cash, and will probably be more likely to incur an IRS audit than traditional bank-based transactions or those from established vendors like PayPal.

And, after all, nobody wants to hide their *expenses* from the IRS — expenses lower your tax bill. So everybody who *sends* bitcoins will declare the transactions if they’re business related — and if the receivers don’t do the same, it might also trigger an audit.

At least, if bitcoin gets into the mainstream.

qarl 5.23.11 / 6pm

good lord – that sounds like fear mongering.

Maria Korolov 5.25.11 / 8am

qarl —

It’s just something businesses need to check into first. It doesn’t mean that they can’t accept bitcoins — after all, plenty of businesses accept cash. (I’d have a hard time imagining a business that *didn’t* take cash.)

But it does create some auditability issues.

There are ways to create auditable systems — cash-based businesses do this all the time. The lower transaction costs associated with bitcoins may well compensate for that, however.

— Maria

Morgaine 5.28.11 / 4pm

Virtual worlds exist in an international space, and Bitcoin is an international currency.

While the IRS and the US government are relevant to US citizens and corporations, they aren’t of any special interest to the rest of the world. The desires of US politicians notwithstanding, their jurisdiction stops at US borders.

Bitcoin matches perfectly the requirement of virtual worlds for tokens of exchange representing in-world value. Being independent of any national currency is a huge advantage for bitcoin in this role, and it would provide an excellent basis for interoperation of virtual worlds throughout the metaverse regardless of their physical location.

Morgaine.

qarl 5.30.11 / 8am

truthfully – the only thing that is anonymous in the bitcoin system is who owns which account. if you reveal to the IRS (or the world) your account number – they can use the system to track EVERY transaction you’ve ever made (on that account.)

there’s a lot of misinformation about bitcoin – sadly, some of it intentional.

how to make a million dollars

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