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Thursday, June 20, 2013

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Kala Bijoux

I think the second link to that article - in the last paragraph links to the wrong Salon article, unless the GAO is also conducting dating studies ;)

Wagner James Au

Haha, good catch, Kate, thanks. Now you know what Salon article I was reading after Andrew's. :)

qarl

Hammy - bit of advice: next time you feel the urge to contradict professional economists - just don't.

according to LL's most recent numbers, there are $40M linden dollars in circulation, vs. $1000M bitcoin.

The Tier Is Too Damn High Party

Well at least, on the flip side, you can now also write off your virtual business losses too.

Wolf Baginski

My understanding is that tax authorities generally have only taken an interest at the point of cashing out: the actual real-money payment from Linden Labs to the potential taxpayer. Which is at least simple. Things such as Tier would be a business expense anyway.

But I am not an accountant, nor do I play one on TV.

As for Bitcoin v. Linden Dollars, there are several different measures. Bitcoin has the lead in total monetary value (which has jumped up and down a lot over the last year), but the Linden Dollar has the lead in number of users.

There's a huge number of people making a few US dollars a month in Second Life. Are they worth bothering with? Bitcoin, with fewer people and more US Dollars, would be more significant, even without possible black-market use.

On the other hand, as Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing reveals, a tax system can exploit a computer-based economy of mostly trivial users, and get money from the insignificant. To self-publish through KDP, as a non-American, just getting the necessary TaxID number would cost me more than I am ever likely to earn. (Median Kindle sales are tiny.)

Wagner James Au

"according to LL's most recent numbers, there are $40M linden dollars in circulation, vs. $1000M bitcoin."

But how many *users* of those Bitcoin in circulation are there, and how many of them use Bitcoin to buy goods and services? With citations, please.

qarl

yes James, if you want to use the magazine definition of "circulation" instead of the economic one, you have a point.

i'm going to guess that was not the intent of the GAO. but hey, maybe you're right, maybe they're all just a bunch of morons. you should write to them and let them know.

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