How far does the Linden dollar travel?
By Adam Reuters
SECOND LIFE, Dec 13 (Reuters) - Linden Lab Chief Financial Officer John Zdanowski has released new financial metrics on the Second Life economy which show a steady ratio between the virtual world’s money supply and transactions between residents, known to economists as the velocity of money.
“Basically, this means that Linden dollars are cycling through the economy about 2.2 times each month,” Zdanowski wrote on the Linden Lab blog. “The economic velocity has been surprisingly steady as the economy has grown. … The stability of this monthly number is interesting given that the daily exchange of Linden dollars has been inflated at times by individual users performing tests on some of their scripts.”
An anonymous Second Life resident claimed to have performed an “experiment” on the economy last month, creating a script that passed money back and forth and boosting the daily user-to-user transactions by more than US$1 million.
“But economic velocity is one of the many underlying metrics of Second Life that show a high level of consistency over time. It’s that consistency that makes forecasting Second Life growth surprisingly accurate and exciting to contemplate,” Zdanowski added.
Other metrics added on the new Economics Graphs page include premium residents, quantity of Second Life land, user hours, and LindeX volume and cash-outs.
