Virtual Property Investor Recoups Investment

afaik_ianal writes "Remember that guy who bought a virtual island in "Project Entropia" for £13,700? Well BBC is reporting that that he has managed to make his money back in under a year. According to the article, 'He made money by selling land to build virtual homes as well as taxing other gamers to hunt or mine on the island.'"

Comments

Wow.

[Anonymous Coward]

FP!

fp?

[Anonymous Coward]

first?

Who?

Virtual economy = Goat economy

[GuyFawkes]

lifted from http://www.somalilandnet.com/somaliland_voice/arti cles/11592.shtml

The Great Hargeisa Goat Bubble

Jan 01 2003 The snow had stopped. The world lay paralysed beneath it. We would be here for some time.

By Julian Gough

"Ibrahim Bihi," he said, extending his right hand. "Dr. Ibrahim Bihi. I am Somali. Oh, it is a long story."

"Jude O'Reilly," I said, extending mine. We shook. "Please, tell the story. I like stories."

"Very well, if you are sure... "

He cleared his throat, and began.

"I eked a meagre living, exploiting a fundamental structural discrepancy in the price of Goats." He looked me in the eye.

I nodded. "You've lost me," I said.

"I must apologise," he said. "My degree is in economics, and it has had an unfortunate effect on my conversational English. Allow me to begin again..." He composed himself. "My story is a sorry tale, of the Dismal Science, in the heart of the Dark Continent..."

"Lost me," I said, nodding.

"A story. Of Economics. In Africa."

"Ah, grand. I have you now," I said, entirely gratified by this excellent clarification. I'd known he had it in him, if he simply made the effort. "Now we're sucking diesel! Sound man. On you go."

He recomposed himself and, after a pause, continued.

"After the final collapse of the Somali state, the confiscation of my property, the destruction of my possessions and my repeated relocation due to the toing and froing of multiple overlapping civil wars, I eventually found myself in Hargeisa, owning only a goat."

"What was she called?"

"Who?"

"The Goat."

"She was a goat. She didn't have a name."

"I find it hard to follow a story without a name," I said. "It is a weakness in me."

"Call her anything you like."

"Can I call her Ethel?" I said, for I had a fondness for the name, it being the name of the unmarried sister of the Orphanage Cook. Ethel gave us all a bag of Emerald sweets to share every Christmas. Thus, every third year I got one and, by rationing my consumption of it to a judicious lick at bedtime, could usually make it last till the taking down of the decorations on January 6th, or a little later. The sweet wrapper itself, stored under my pillow, often maintained a trace of coconutty, chocolatey fragrance till March.

"Feel free to think of the goat as Ethel."

"Thank you." I closed my eyes. Ethel the Goat shimmered and came into hard focus, replacing the faint, nebulous, nameless goat Ibrahim Bihi had originally introduced. Ethel chewed meditatively, and tilted her head to one side, looking at me unblinking.

Opening my eyes again, I urged him to continue.

He continued. "The forced sale of a goat in wartime is unlikely to realise the full value of the goat."

I mentally substituted the word "Ethel" for the terms "a goat" and "the goat", and the meaning became entirely clear. I closed my eyes and smiled fondly at Ethel, as he continued.

"Alternatively, the slaughter and personal consumption of the goat, while keeping one alive in the short term, would lead in the medium term to having no goat, and no money. In the long term, with neither assets nor capital nor cashflow, death would inevitably ensue. Luckily, my PhD had been devoted to aspects of arbitrage; the exploitation of price discrepancies in imperfect markets. I thus resolved to apply my knowledge of temporary market inefficiencies to my Goat."

He thus resolved to apply his knowledge of temporary market inefficiencies to Ethel, I said under my breath.

"This final, or ultimate, goat, on which all my hopes rested, had only three legs, due to shrapnel from a mine stepped on some weeks previously by my second-last, or penultimate, goat, on the trek to Hargeisa."

Hastily naming the penultimate goat Charles, I exploded it immediately before I could bond with it, and removed Ethel's rear le