Second Life's Strange Connection to the 2024 Presidential Election

If the Trump/Vance 2024 presidential campaign seems odd to you (to say the least), here's another bit of weirdness to contemplate:

Without the early success of Second Life, it's very likely that the Trump/Vance campaign would not even exist. 

I'm quite serious. But to understand what I mean, we need to go back into ancient history -- by which I mean 2004:

While it launched in 2003, Second Life first began gaining heavy media attention in 2004, after creator Linden Lab made an innovative announcement for the time: They made it possible to trade the virtual world's internal currency, Linden Dollars, for US dollars.

"The world will increasingly buy and sell and trade these things we are making [in Second Life]," as Philip Rosedale explained to me back then. "So I think that real digital worlds will naturally have real economies and real exchange with real life."

The move drove growing Silicon Valley excitement around the Second Life economy, leading to the hype wave of 2006-2008 fueled by the infamous BusinessWeek cover story and a slew of other coverage. Linden Dollars were mainly used to buy content in SL itself, though people began to experiment with using it to buy non-SL items. (For instance, someone experimented with selling PC graphics cards for L$.)

And then, in 2009, Bitcoin was invented.

The digital currency attracted growing excitement among hardcore technophiles, but the problem back then was this: There was no easy, legal way to buy and sell Bitcoin for US$.

Enter Linden Dollars. As I write in my book:

Linden Dollars helped drive up the value of the cryptocurrency shortly after its inception in 2009, when purchasing Bitcoin with standard fiat cash was nigh impossible. 

For a while, there were even in-world ATMs where Bitcoin could be purchased for Linden Dollars, and vice versa.  Oculus founder Palmer Luckey once recounted to me, entirely bemused, a time when he purchased Bitcoin from someone who insisted that they meet each other as avatars in Second Life, to finalize the transaction. 

Without Second Life, in other worlds, it's quite likely Bitcoin and crypto in general might not have achieved enough escape velocity to enjoy the market euphoria it went on to attract. 

But don't take my word for it, here's what Bitcoin News wrote recently:

When people think about Bitcoin’s past they sometimes refer to subjects like Mt Gox, the Silk Road, or the famous pizza transaction. Although, people often forget that the online virtual world Second Life played an important role during the Bitcoin network’s early years. In fact, some large Linden Dollar (L$) holders who swapped their virtual tokens for bitcoin may be crypto millionaires today.

Bitcoin might eventually have become a hot commodity without Linden Dollars, but without that early traction leading to real cash fortunes, I doubt it.

In any case, many of the Silicon Valley elite now hold vast swathes of Bitcoin, and are hoping for a better economic climate to sell them in. 

Enter Trump. As billionaire Mark Cuban recently explained:

Part 1
Here is a contrary opinion on the emergence of Silicon Valley support for former President Trump. Which like all my opinions on here, probably won’t be popular.

It’s a bitcoin play.

Not because the former President is a far stronger proponent of crypto. That’s nice.…

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) July 17, 2024

Here is a contrary opinion on the emergence of Silicon Valley support for former President Trump. Which like all my opinions on here, probably won’t be popular.

It’s a Bitcoin play.

Not because the former President is a far stronger proponent of crypto. That’s nice. But doesn’t really impact the price of crypto. It makes it easier to operate a crypto business because of the inevitable, and required, changes at the SEC What will drive the price of BTC is lower tax rates and tariffs, which if history is any guide (and it’s not always), will be inflationary.

Combine that with global uncertainty as to the geopolitical role of the USA, and the impact on the US Dollar as a reserve currency, and you can’t align the stars any better for a BTC price acceleration.

Since Cuban floated this theory, several insiders have told me that yes, this is a very plausible key reason why so many Valley VC elite now heavily support Trump.

The same elite pushed for JD Vance, a former Silicon Valley VC himself, to be Trump's Vice President:

The Ohio senator [Vance] introduced David Sacks, a prominent venture capitalist, to Donald Trump Jr in March, the New York Times reported, and attended Sacks’ pro-Trump fundraiser in June, co-sponsored by Chamath Palihapitiya, Sacks’ co-host on the popular podcast All In. The event, which cost as much as $300,000 to attend, was held at Sacks’s San Francisco mansion and featured the investor thanking Vance for his help making the fundraiser happen. During an informal conversation at the dinner, Sacks and Palihapitiya told Trump to nominate Vance as his VP choice.

Sacks spoke at the Republican national convention Monday. In the days prior, he had also called Trump to advocate for Vance as the VP pick, as had Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson, the ex-Fox News host, according to Axios. Peter Thiel also expressed his support for Vance in private calls with Trump, the New York Times reported.

Palmer Luckey, who used to buy Bitcoin in Second Life, is also a Trump-supporting protege of Thiel's. And even before becoming his VP choice, Vance was pushing a plan to make regulators more friendly to crypto like Bitcoin.

And so that's how the most unintended of unintended consequences of Second Life was set in motion. I doubt many associated with the virtual world are happy with this association. But then again, it's still hardly the strangest connection in Trump/Vance's closet.

And then yet again, by all accounts, JD Vance is actively and profoundly hurting Trump's re-election campaign. So if Trump/Vance end up losing in November, we can thank Second Life for inadvertently setting that campaign disaster into motion.

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Comments

[Joey1058]

History is either something you look back on with fond memories, or with cringe. I was one that was mining BTC on a regular desktop in the beginning. Was up to 10 full coins before the first halving. But back then a single BTC was worth less than a Linden dollar. So I was going the opposite direction. Buying L$ with BTC through the VirWox exchange. I went through 4 BTC that way. Then I discovered "hey, BTC is actually worth more now!" So I sold the rest. Made a whopping ~US$60, and thought I made out like a bandit. So, yeah, history is cringe for me.