Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Real money out of virtual worlds

[Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Way way in the text-based dark ages of the Internet I ran some BBSs and 
MUDs (MOOs actually) that made it so you could buy and sell with real 
money. Both game objects as well as real objects. (Ebay, before there 
was a web.) There were plenty of others who did so also. It was kind of 
cool because I could make small amounts of money off the cool stuff I 
programmed.

As it is, I'm looking to find a way to make up to $5 a pop for copies of 
some of the programs I'm doing now to help support the development. 
Trying to balance this idea with the idea of giving everything away for 
free is rather tricky though.

One of my ideas I'm working on is to create a virtual currency called 
DUC (digital universal currency) with the smallest unit being a DUCE 
(digital universal currency entity) where each DUCE is worth roughly a 
10th of a US cent (enabling micropayments) and the main unit of payment 
is a DUCK (digital universal currency kilo) which is 1000 DUCE or 
roughly equivilant to US$1. In theory the currency would start off 
roughly equivilant to US money but be allowed to take on it's own life. 
It'd be backed with all the money users spent to purchase DUC which 
would be held in a bank account somewhere and allowed to earn interest. 
Having my own currency would make it easy to make ecommerce easier. I 
could do away with all transaction fees and most of the complexities of 
implementing e-comm sites. Also I could allow person to person transfers 
and make the security much better than online checks or credit cards 
currently are. Part of my plan is to set up a couple example packages to 
ease introducing DUC. One would be a e-comm store of my own that only 
accepted DUC. Another would be an auction website that only used DUC. 
Both these packages would be available as opensource also. On top of 
those would be a sort of online banking website (Paypal-like) and a 
money trading website that'd let users set up virtual shops to trade DUC 
and other currencies. Unlike a bank users would not be able to convert 
DUC they'd purchased or earned back to their own currency through me. 
Instead I'd encourage user-to-user transactions to enable this. Some 
users would benefit by being able to convert DUC back to their own 
currency (like US dollars) while others could benefit from being able to 
buy more DUC for their money than if they'd bought it straight from me. 
My profit would be in the interest earned from the money held in trust 
to back the currency. That interest would go to pay any expenses and the 
salaries of the people that worked for the company. I really think this 
could take off if it could get enough backing. I've noticed that most 
users that sell on sites like EBay tend to spend a good deal of that 
money on EBay. Making that transaction safer, easier, and cheaper would 
encourage them to switch to DUC. At the same time I'd be opening the 
door to others to make massive amounts of money off the system by 
playing it as currency traders. Get those two things happening and it'll 
become interesting enough for major ecomm sites to look into. How much 
extra money do you think Amazon could earn if they didn't have to pay 
credit card transaction fees for a tenth of their customers? Probably a 
lot. I've got some of the code working and a domain for the project. I 
just need to find enough time and money to roll the project out the door.

The two biggest places that you can earn money off the Internet is from 
transaction processing (money) and from moving item A from point B to 
point C (shipping). These are the things I'd target if I could.

I guess the point to this whole thing is that I want to make virtual 
money into real money that is equally good across virtual worlds and the 
real world. :)

--
Michael <EMAIL:PROTECTED>
http://kavlon.org

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