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Virtual World, Real Banking
The Opposable Thumbs blog brings news about MindArk PE AB, a Swedish game developer whose MMO Entropia Universe has an in-game economy based on real money. It seems the company has been "granted preliminary approval for a real banking license by the Swedish Finance Supervisory. ... MindArk's going to be just like a bank in the real world: it will be backed by Sweden's $60,000 deposit insurance, offer interest-bearing accounts for its clients, feature direct deposit options, let players pay bills online, and apparently will offer loans to customers." An Associated Press report adds that "The economic activity in Entropia Universe was worth about $420 million last year, about the same as the Pacific island nation of Kiribati, population 110,000. The game has 850,000 player accounts, though not all of them represent active players."
Can you say, 'Money laundering'?
As we've all seen, the financial sector has thousands of man-years of experience playing games with other people's imaginary money. They should find this new line of business a natural fit...
REAL banks have about the same level of gamesmanship as these virtual currencies anyway, what's the difference?
WoW, EVE, AIG, what's your game?
I'm not even sure where to begin.
So what happens if someone hacks your player account and takes out a mortgage on your house?
Some people are only alive because it's against the law for me to hunt them down and kill them.
(Well, actually, we don't, which is why you spy clueless doofuses still trying to set up shop there in some form of another. I wonder if the recession will aid in putting an end to such foolish waste...)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
How is this any different than having a mobile interface or a web interface? It's just a new way to access banking integrated into a virtual world.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
One of the problems when virtual currency = real currency is that people can now affect other people's money. When the whole BoB thing went down, I was just thinking of the economical impact that had on that corporation. If someone hacks the system or accounts, is that going to be considered theft? Will selling a fake item be considered fraud?
people making and losing real money playing computer games
What?
MindArk's going to be just like a bank in the real world...
... complete with the service charges!
Including a minimum withdrawal of 100 USD and a service charge of 10 USD (or higher) per withdrawal.
I've been wanting to try Entropia for a while now. My old PC was too far under spec to really run the game besides logging in and viewing a slideshow. My new PC easily meets the specs except..they don't support Vista O_O XP or below.. Which is quite sad since there are so few science fiction MMORPG's out there and even if only 100k or 200k of that 850k are active that's still quite a big enough player base to populate servers daily to warrant giving it a try.
Aw Frell this
Now I want to write a cypherpunk-themed MMORPG, and set up something like this as cover for connecting an cryptographically anonymous digital cash system to the real-world banking infrastructure.
If I wanted to play around with real money there's nothing stopping me from logging into my bank's online banking or doing some e-trading on the stock market. Since I don't really enjoy those things, why would I enjoy a game which is that tied to normal life?
~ I am logged on, therefore I am.
So now if you manage to collect a bunch of money in a game you have to file an FBAR with the IRS.
This system is just open to so many flaws.. both technical and otherwise. Technical side of it, a bug appears, a user somehow managed to make millions in a matter of minute, and.. oh look.. he can just turn it into real money and run away never to be seen again. Otherwise-side of it, the company could easily use this to cover some unlawful transactions, with so many odd and seemingly pointless transactions and deposits, who would notice one rogue equally as useless transaction.. Another thing to note is, who will "own" the bank? Will the company be able to just take money off me whenever they want because it's "their game", dispute it been real money..?
A shell bank is defined as one without a physical presence, and banks are not permitted to do business with shell banks by the Patriot Act, so it's doubtful this bank will have any links to the financial system.
I have often heard it said that when a currency becomes worthless it is monopoly money - not real.
The truth is, in the last year or so, we have discovered that all money is monopoly money. It retains value only while people accept it as such, and agree to abide by the rules of the game.
Some governments started tearing up the rules, and some people started to ignore such rules as there were. Look where it got us.
The money used in on-line games is just as *real* as any other, so long as there are rules and people abide by them.
Perfect idea!
Going to my site http://www.zabeykin.ru/
During the 1930s depression, a little town in Austria called Worgl decided to print their own money, since the national currency was in such short supply.
It worked wonders, unemployment went from 30% to less than 5%.
What makes money worth something is the market. Is there a market for it? Since the Worgl money was produced by the local council and accepted for all council payments including taxes, there was a ready market for the money.
The utility of money is that it is readily exchangeable for goods and services.
You use cheques? You use credit cards? Debit cards? None of these are "official" money. They are not US dollars. They are credit, created and supplied by private banks. That credit is exchangeable into paper dollars as required. The current recession is caused by banks denying people access to that credit.
Credit is imaginary money (whereas paper is not) because it vanishes. Credit is created (from nothing) when you take out a loan. Along with the credit, there's a debt. The debt pays interest and the credit vanishes as the debt is paid. Hence credit is "temporary money". Also, there is far more credit than there is real money, about 95% of money is bank created credit, so if everyone went and asked for paper dollars, there wouldn't be enough to pay them all. This is the dirty little secret of banking. Banks don't just hold and loan out money. They create new imaginary/temporary money which they loan out to you.
So. Bankers are people who actually do create monopoly money. On a daily basis and on a massive scale. You now understand why they are always telling you that you "must have confidence in the banking system"?
Deleted
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_State
Take a look at their terms of use ... they're pretty ridiculous, For example:
You may not spread any rumors, false or inaccurate information about MindArk, the Entropia Universe or MindArkâ(TM)s Partners, associates, staff or affiliates, which MindArk consider, at MindArkâ(TM)s sole discretion, to be potentially damaging, by using the Entropia Universe, IRC (chats) or any other public forums in any media, now known or not currently known, including but not limited to a web site.
It was possible to make money in entropia universe (Then called Project Entropia). Hell I did it. I sold my account for a little over $15k USD when I got out of it in 2005. Bought a Delorean with the funds. :D
Now days it's pretty much just a glorified casino as others have mentioned. The only people who make money now are mindark, and the players that have been around since the beginning and have the highest skills and gear that isn't available anymore. 98% of the player base is going to lose pretty much everything they put into the game. My advice to anyone interested in the game is just treat it as subscription based. Set a monthly allotment of what your willing to spend and only put that in it every month.
I got bored with it mainly because nothing ever changed. It was just logging in and doing the same crap day after day. MA has also been promising a switch to a better graphics engine since early 2005.. I know as of a few months ago (last time I logged in) That still hasn't happened..
Barack Obama - hell bent on bankrupting the USA once and for all.
- Chairman Barack Hussein "The Teleprompter" Obama is deeply connected to corruption, Rahm Emanuel (Radical authoritarian Statist-Zionist whose father was part of the Murderous Civilian Killing Israeli Terrorist Organization known as IRGUN), Connected to Rod Blagojevich (Rahm inherited Rod's federal-congress seat), Connected to Ayers, a man who promotes the concept that civilian collateral damage is ok in a war against freedom, Preacher Jeremiah Wright, who is himself a black-elitist who wants all the people who largely "pay the freight" to suffer, 31 million on food stamps, more blacks are in prison and on food-stamps per capita than anyone else. The problem with Wright is simply this: the facts are "racist."
- Obama: Racist, AIPAC-Zionist, Corrupted and a Traitor and a Liar who can't even produce a valid birth certificate (which is not a certificate of live birth)
- Raytheon lobbyist in Pentagon
- Goldman Sachs insider second in command at Treasury.
- Cabinet has had several nominees and appointees with multiple tax fraud issues.
- The head of the IRS and the head of the Treasury, Geithner, is a Tax Cheat
- Lied about no lobbyists
- Lied about having a new degree of accountability and a SUNSHINE period of new laws, he has signed bills with little or no review at whitehouse.gov as promised.
- Appointed a second amendment violating Rich-pardoning treasonist Eric Holder as AG, the top cop of the USA, a man who helped a fugitive evade justice.
- Has not put a dime in for a single new nuclear power plant but wants to help bridges and roads to promote more driving.
- Obama, Blagojevich and Rahm Emanuel have a LOT to hide. They literally lived next to each other, Rahm had (until being Chairman Obama's Chief of staff) Blagojevich's old federal congressional seat. Blagojevich helped Chairman "The Teleprompter" Obama cheat his way to the Illinois senate by getting other candidates thrown off the ballot in Illinois. Why do you think Blagojevich was so mad? Obama DID owe him, big time. Rahm and Obama are using Blagojevich and trying to cut his head off to keep him away.
- Tony Rezko, Iraqi Arms Dealer Nahdmi Auchi, and of course Aiham Alsammarae. Chairman "The Teleprompter" Hussein Obama is so corrupted its a joke.
- Fools and "useful idiots" twist the pie charts by leaving welfare, workfare, interest on debt, social security, Medicare and Medicaid out and focusing only on non-whole "discretionary" pie charts.
2007 high level pie chart, Federal Budget, USA
2009 Pie chart, detailed, Federal Budget, USA
- Chairman Obama is drastically increasing spending and creating more entitlements that will make the US less competitive (especially against China, India, East Europe/Russia). This will be a huge disaster and change you can believe in will strap you and your grandkids with more debt. No taxation without representation? Obama is spending money for the next two-three generations and they can't even vote yet, or even have been born.
- An alternative to the dollar and a forex and a reserve currency came up at the last G20 meeting. The world will not take faith in Obama's liar-socialist spending and welfare state, why should the taxpayers (plebian citizen-slaves of a police state).
- The spending going on now vastly eclipses all previous spending. In fact, the massive trillion plus debts is a thing of the 80's onwards. Congress signs the checks, remember that Year after year, as egregious as the pentagon spending is, that the social spending is completely a waste of money and it is unfunded over the long term. Eisenhower built the interstates, the US could build a new power infrastructure with this money but instead is being pissed into creating more of an entitlement system that is STILL unfunded, and without massive poll-taxes a