Anshe to Launch Inter-World Financial Market
Virtual entrepreneur Anshe Chung will launch a virtual world-spanning financial market in early June, according to a news release on the Anshe Chung Studios site. The service will “allow direct capital flow and investment across virtual world boundaries,” and will link the markets of Second Life, Entropia Universe and IMVU. Anshe Chung Studios — which is run by German citizens Ailin and Guntram Graef — will provide “a virtual financial market, financial products and a set of services” linking the three worlds. Among other things, the service will allow Second Life residents to invest their Linden dollars in things like malls and other locations in Entropia. Second Life land funds and similar instruments would be available for investment by holders of IMVU and Entropia currency, and IMVU fashion businesses might receive investments in L$ or PED (the Entropia currency). It remains to be seen whether there’s much of a market for such inter-world investment, but Anshe has a very interesting take on the possible effects of making financial borders more porous:
“We believe that allowing residents in a virtual world, no matter which one they have chosen to live in, to easily diversify their portfolio of virtual investments into other virtual worlds is going to lead to a paradigm shift,” the press release reads. “At ACS we are convinced that once capital is flowing freely, people, goods and services will follow and eventually we will see incentive and pressure for the emergence of open tools and standards. It is our vision that one day even traveling across virtual worlds and taking your belongings with you should become as easy as a mouseclick.”
An inter-world financial market may help push things in that direction. On the other hand, it may be too early for such a market to thrive. While Web sites such as IGE deal in the currencies of a number of different virtual worlds, the currency arbitrage that takes place is a rather small proportion of the total market. (Note that in the absence of regulatory bodies I have only anecdotal evidence to go on for this. I’m confident we would have heard of more arbitrage cowboys if they were out there, however. Many people do prefer to operate under the radar, but there always seems to be at least one braggart.)
The market Anshe envisions, of course, is more than just a forex market, and it’s entirely possible we’ll start to see a lot of cross-border investment. One of the best things Anshe could do here would be to quantify that trade for us, or at least make the figures available for people who might like to construct financial reports on the state of affairs. Let’s hope the “business girl” is at least that open with the information flowing through her markets. It should be of slight concern that there is no regulatory body, but in fact these kind of flows will eventually be regulated by the same people who regulate real-world financial markets; it remains only for virtual markets to grow large enough to merit oversight. For now, there’s a new wild west frontier opening up for any virtual investment cowboys out there. Saddle up.
[And thanks to Nate Randall for sending along the news, and Bobbie Tanner for pointing out these two forum threads.]
Feeds
would you like to invest?
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2006/05/mindark_im_sorr.html
hmmm
bluesapphire..
1)that tearranova blog is old news already, I beleive MindArk may have learned their lesson on that one.
2)It isn’t an Investment into MindArk…..
One fascinating effect will be that virtual worlds will be forced to compete with each other for interest and traffic, even if they are very different, because the virtual money will easily and quickly flow where the action seems to be that week.
I find this quite interesting. The three platforms chosen couldn’t be more different; from what I’ve seen, there’s very little crossover in the fan bases. To each their own and all, I just don’t see many Second Lifers using Entropia, or IMVU users hopping into Second Life. Throw WoW or Eve Online in the mix, and then you’ll have a bridge between the fan bases of the three platforms.
True observation Flipper. However, Entropia has a history of excruciatingly long withdrawal times. To the tune of three months on occasion. Now a player can trade PED for L$ and get thier money in a week.
The real question to me here is what MindArk, the makers of Entropia are going to do, if anything. They have a long history of banning and otherwise trying to force people to only use thier withdrawal process. Until now, all transfers out of the game system have been very hush hush.
My hope is this thing will go off without a hitch and we will se the companies of various metaverses come together to offer a secure solution.
Nate Randall
RCE Universe
Nate: The three months are mostly unverified first time withdrawers, if I understand correctly. People with a verified history get their money within hours at best or a week or two. With the ATM card it took less than a minute (I assume the next gen card will not take longer. :-)
The banning of people where most in the old days, alright? The Entropia EULA has been updated since then, and the most current one is from Feb of this year, alright?
KillerKlown -
My last three withdrawals, all approximatly one year apart, the most recent being one month ago, took 30-90 days. I have had the same Bank Account linked to Entropia since I started in February 2003.
In reading the EULA, I agree there should be no issue with this project unless MindArk chooses to enforce it in such a way. They have definitly never come forward and said it is ok to withdraw using alternate methods. Which in this case will be required.
Nate Randall
RCE Universe
Anshe is no fool - the real money in investing isn’t putting your money into the market, its *being* the market. Clearing transactions and charging a small fee is the way to scale your operation to the moon, figuratively. Assuming of course, the traders will be there.
What is very interesting is this was supossed to be a secret.
“Please keep this low profile for now and don’t post about it on blogs or outside this forum. The official launch of our trading platform will only be in June and right now it is not yet what we want to present to the public.”
http://www.entropiaforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=67991?referrerid=545
@ thoreau
This blog post is on a public press release by ACS. Not about what you may be referring to.
@Nate
Ansche posted on the Entropia Forum that this was to be kept below the radar until June. Then there was a press release. I found that to be interesting.
[…] Mark Wallace at 3PointD offers some thoughts on Anshe’s announcement: The market Anshe envisions, of course, is more than just a forex market, and it’s entirely possible we’ll start to see a lot of cross-border investment. One of the best things Anshe could do here would be to quantify that trade for us, or at least make the figures available for people who might like to construct financial reports on the state of affairs. Let’s hope the “business girl” is at least that open with the information flowing through her markets. It should be of slight concern that there is no regulatory body, but in fact these kind of flows will eventually be regulated by the same people who regulate real-world financial markets; it remains only for virtual markets to grow large enough to merit oversight. For now, there’s a new wild west frontier opening up for any virtual investment cowboys out there. Saddle up. […]
[…] A votre avis, quand sera-t-il possible d’y échanger des jetons de PKR ? (via 3pointD) […]
Her ability to trade at IMVU has been seriously altered as she has been suspended as a professional developer there which is the only way to move more than 50k IMVU credits at a time.
She was suspended for exploiting a bug allowing her to change the prices on items other developers had already derived to resell and thus undercutting thier prices by as much as 80%.
Which makes me wonder.. as she progresses towards her Inter-World Financial Market.. does that mean that in order for it to take hold and work that she needs to destroy the existing economies in order to get their perspective companies to get on board?
Anshe has displayed poor operating behavior, as well made moves against one developer who seemed to be too much competition for her on IMVU, and took steps to make sure the developers account was first suspended, and ultimately the developer was banned from IMVU.
Anshe may be a brilliant business woman, but the way she and her company conducts themselves on IMVU hurts the community. She already has enough TOS Violations under her belt to be banned from IMVU - but she has yet to be.
Do people honestly think she has our communities in mind when she speaks about growth and best interests? She’s a leech upon IMVU, and I’m sure other online communities. Her actions this time around has destroyed the reputations of developers who derived from her work ( or copied work whichever the case may be ), she’s caused many developers to lose money, and customers.
If this is the company who will be leading us in growth, expansion, and better services.. then its time to simply trash the communities and start fresh. Her best interests lie in her own bank account - no matter who she steps on to accomplish her goals.
ACS is an entity that places greed above business ethics, just look at the storm she’;s brewing over at IMVU for publicly violating the TOS. Link here: http://www.imvu.com/catalog/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpbb2&file=viewtopic.php&t=129383&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
http://www.imvu.com/catalog/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpbb2&file=viewtopic.php&t=129383&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
ANYTHING having to do with this woman will cause even MORE problems than already exist!
I do think, that she identified a business opportunity. It is now End of July and I assume, the AnsheX service is the implementation the announcement was all about.
ACS is surly as greedy as every sound business there is, don’t get fooled about that. In the ACS case it will be more interesting to see their reactions to the following events, that are highly probable to occur in the following order:
1. First market panic by speculators (virtual world is either as risky as spot markets or even riskier in my unfinancial opinion).
2. forward integration strategies by virtual world vendors. Linden Lab did put GOM out of business.
3. If exchange is big enough: New entry of existing financial institutes with hughe reputation and customer trust?
imvu rules
imvu rocks
i love imvu because it is cool
hurry up
hurry up
memorcard good!
ACS is surly as greedy as every sound business there is, don’t get fooled about that. In the ACS case it will be more interesting to see their reactions to the following events, that are highly probable to occur in the following order:
very hello good!
it remains only for virtual markets to grow large enough to merit oversight. For now, there’s a new wild west frontier opening up for any virtual investment cowboys out there. Saddle up.
http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2006/05/mindark_im_sorr.html