New World Notes

Should the Federal Reserve Create a Virtual Currency? Former Linden Lab Exec Gene Yoon Has Advice Based on Managing Second Life's $500M+ Virtual Economy

The United States Federal Reserve is seriously looking into the idea of creating an official US$ virtual currency -- a move, as Politico explains, "that could shake up banks, give millions of low-income Americans access to the financial system."

Before doing that, however, the Fed might want to read this white paper memo addressed to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, written for the Aspen Institute's tech policy hub. It's authored by Gene Yoon, who has some important if remarkably quirky experience with virtual currency, as a lead executive with Linden Lab during Second Life's peak period of economic growth.

"I had my time managing a 'toy' digital currency back at Linden Lab," as he puts it on Twitter. "At its height, the L$ was used in over half a billion real USD worth of transactions per year. I think the US Fed would be making a mistake in moving forward with this -- the mistake is only in going Fed-first. The United States has a wonderful advantage in 'the laboratory of the states' - experimental policies can more safely be trialed at the state level."

There is, Gene tells me, a specific example of something that happened with the Second Life economy that feeds into his advice to Secretary Yellen now:

Linden Dollars Helped Fuel Bitcoin's Early Hype -- Even Though L$ Are Still More Used Than BTC

Pretty interesting article from the news section of Bitcoin.com, explaining how Linden Dollars helped drive up the value of Bitcoin back in the early days of the cryptocurrency roughly a decade ago:

During these nascent times, a few fiat currencies were trading with Bitcoin. At this time, Second Life’s Linden dollars (L$) were also exchanged for large sums of Bitcoin as well. Linden Dollars are featured in the virtual world called Second Life, a game developed by Linden Lab in 2003.

When Bitcoin was kickstarting into higher gears in 2010 through 2013, Second Life’s L$ and the virtual world also saw rapid growth. Second Life’s virtual economy met Satoshi’s creation in April 2011, back when the company Virwox allowed L$ and BTC trading pairs.

Bitcoin had a fascinating relationship with Second Life users because L$ could be exchanged for fiat, which gave BTC an alternative fiat gateway in the early days. Not only did the two virtual currencies form a symbiotic relationship, but it also caused people to speculate on which virtual asset was better.

Without this exchange ability made possible by Linden Dollars, it's quite possible Bitcoin might not have achieved enough escape velocity to enjoy the euphoria it does today. Then again, "euphoria" never translated into Bitcoin becoming an actual currency used to buy actual goods and services on a mass market. As I'm quoted in the Bitcoin.com post:

How to Buy NFTs of Virtual Art Made by AI Artists Created by AI With ETH

... is a title to a post I never guessed I'd write even 12 months ago. But here we are. As to what the F it all actually means:

• NFT, for non-fungible tokens, are virtual items of perceived value (art, keepsakes, etc) bought and sold on a blockchain.
• Virtual art made by AI artists, in this case, refers to art made by "Taylor" and "Alejandro", two AI artists created by August Rosedale for his Mirage Gallery.
• ETH, for Ethereum, is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency that's theoretically more environmentally friendly than Bitcoin, but still only in theory.

They're being sold on Mintable, a community-run NFT marketplace. And if that's still somewhat intimidating but you're interested in the fairly delirious buzz around NFT, here are step-by-step instructions for buying the art of Taylor and Alejandro -- or for that matter, any other item on Mintable -- from August Rosedale himself. 

First, however, please caveat the hell out of your emptor purchasing decision beforehand. For instance, read this tweet thread highly critical of NFT's long-term fortunes.

That to one side, here's young Rosedale:

Animal Capitalizing: Creator of Game With Virtual World Economy Shocked By Real Money Demand for Virtual World Supply

Pictured: Animal Crossing character currently being sold on eBay

Anyone who's played and followed virtual worlds for any moderate length of  time could have predicted this would happen after Nintendo's Animal Crossing became a massive phenomenon -- but apparently, Nintendo itself didn't see it coming:

[I]f people want a certain villager, sellers offer the ability to either buy them with in-game money (either millions of bells or Nook Miles Tickets) or real-life money. The median price range is $10 (these are sold listings by the way), but popular villages like Raymond can go for as much as $25 or more in package deals. It's a practice that's been going on since launch, but only just now is Nintendo going to actually start looking into it. Speaking to J-Cast, Nintendo explains that selling content for real life monetary gain is a violation of their terms of service, and they will take action accordingly if they see it happening.

Notwithstanding that threat, there's a pretty huge marketplace for Animal Crossing content on eBay (with 15,000+ "animal crossing villager" items currently for sale), and Asian players started selling items for Animal Crossing goods via WeChat Pay and AliPay QR back in April. None of that's surprising. The real mystery is why Nintendo didn't anticipate any of that, and create some kind of Animal Crossing marketplace of its own -- or capture it via an auction system similar to what Blizzard did with Diablo III content back in 2012.

Libra Has Promise, Says Virtual Currency Expert/Blockchain Skeptic Adam Frisby, But Faces Adoption, Trust & Storage Challenges

Everyone in tech is talking today about Libra, the new blockchain-related cryptocurrency initiative led by Facebook in association with many major companies and organizations. (Read this detailed summary from Josh Constine on TechCrunch.) Assuming it isn't regulated to death by concerned government officials, can it live up to the utopian promises made in its promotional video (see above), while becoming a functional alternative to existing currency system?

"Biggest hole is just whether or not people trust it," virtual currency expert Adam Frisby tells me, in a chat today. "I think some will. Honestly, if it was anyone but Facebook pitching this (even if their stake is a minority one), it'd be way more likely to succeed."

As longtime New World Notes readers know, Adam has been involved as an entrepreneur in virtual world economies for over 15 years, and recently wrote a much-shared VentureBeat essay detailing his skepticism for blockchain. Libra, however, has promise, because (in his words) "it [s]olves a lot of the issues with blockchain, by not really being one."

One interesting point he raises: The industries with the greatest incentive to use Libra now are on the edge of the mainstream economy -- for instance, gambling, online gaming, porn, and the burgeoning legal pot industry in some US states. In my view, their rapid embrace will likely turn Libra into "Vice Coin" -- a brand association which might hamper Libra's adoption by the wider mainstream. (Which is probably not what Facebook and its partners were going for.)

On a technical front, Adam me, the heavy storage requirements may prevent Libra from becoming decentralized. Other challenges remain. For more detail, here's our lightly edited transcript:

Infographic: Survey of Gamers Suggests Strong Ownership of & Interest in Using Cryptocurrency Across Game Worlds

Here's a noteworthy infographic from Wax.io, a virtual assets service, based on a survey of 1000 gamers. (Click to embiggen.) Key points: 55% of the millenial gamers surveyed own a cryptocurrency, while 3 in 4 of the gamers surveyed want a means for exchanging their virtual goods in one game for virtual currency they could use in another.

"The survey was built on SurveyGizmo and then distributed through Amazon's Mechanical Turk," says Salvador Ingram, who helped create the infographic for WAX. "To participate in the survey, respondents had to consider themselves gamers (an avid player of video games and frequenter of online virtual worlds) and buy/trade/sell virtual items on occasion."

Notably, 87% of the gamers surveyed say they've never actually used a cryptocurrency within a gaming community -- unsurprising, as most cryptocurrency owners rarely use it to purchase goods and services, preferring instead to sell it to others for real cash.

Here's the breakdown of cryptocurrencies mentioned by the survey takers, with Bitcoin predominating, but several others showing significant usage:

High Fidelity to Launch Virtual Reality-Based Cryptocurrency Exchange Where Users Can Convert Their Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. Into HFC

Philip Rosedale just announced that his new High Fidelity platform is enabling user-to-user payments of HFC, its blockchain-based, centrally-managed cryptocurrency. To help spur the virtual economy, the company is also giving out free "grants" of HFC to early users of High Fidelity: "This means," he explains, "you can now do things like tip a virtual DJ during a performance, or in the future, exchange one cryptocurrency for another at a virtual foreign exchange office."

Yes, you read that right:

We have also created a server for the community called ‘BankofHighFidelity’, which can hopefully be an in-world hub for those offering services such as exchange between different cryptocurrencies and HFC, as well as being the location to receive the grants mentioned above.

I just e-mailed Philip to ask if that mean what I think it means: "For example, users can exchange their Ethereum for HFC?"

Philip Rosedale's reply: "It isn't up yet, but will be soon, and the answer is yes."

Impressively ambition move. When this exchange goes online, it could become a (relatively) seamless way for all variety of cryptocurrency owners to convert some of their holdings into a centrally stabilized cryptocurrency. (HFC is managed by the company to prevent wild fluctuations of value.) And in the near future, we should see exchange services that enable selling HFC for actual, cold, hard, backed by the US military, fiat cash.

Bitcoin Infographic: Look at All the Big Companies & Organizations Which Wasted Time Trying to Accept a Virtual Money Hardly Anyone Uses as Money

Market research firm 16 Best just sent me this beautiful and handy infographic showing all the major companies and organizations which accept Bitcoin as payment -- over 160 in fact! -- click here for the embiggenated version. With Bitcoin price wildly fluctuating while daily transaction volume stubbornly remains flat, it's really a case study in humility, and the hubris of libertarian thought experiments which run aground against reality: So many reputed firms with so many smart people, convinced despite all evidence to the contrary that Bitcoin was ever going to be used as actual money to buy actual (legal) goods and services. With Bitcoin's daily transaction rate at around 200,000 per day, it remains the case that Linden Dollars are still used more often than Bitcoin has been, or likely every will be.

Chia: Bitcoin's Green Competitor Must Still Compete With Inertia That Made Climate Change a Problem in the First Place

Bitcoin may require more energy consumption than a Trump fan with a McMansion and an SUV, but now, reports Josh Constine at TechCrunch, a talented coder has come up with a solution:

A bitcoin transaction wastes as much electricity as it takes to power an American home for a week, and legendary coder Bram Cohen wants to fix that. And considering he invented the ubiquitous peer-to-peer file transfer protocol BitTorrent, you should take him seriously. Cohen has just started a new company called Chia Network that will launch a cryptocurrency based on proofs of time and storage rather than bitcoin’s electricity-burning proofs of work. Essentially, Chia will harness cheap and abundant unused storage space on hard drives to verify its blockchain.

Pretty impressive -- though this just means Chia is facing the electric car problem on a micro level:

Bitcoin Users Are Hurting the Environment More Than Every Donald Trump Supporter Driving a Giant SUV

You think I'm exaggerating but turns out I'm probably not, as Vice reports:

That problem is carbon emissions. De Vries has come up with some estimates by diving into data made available on a coal-powered Bitcoin mine in Mongolia. He concluded that this single mine is responsible for 8,000 to 13,000 kg CO2 emissions per Bitcoin it mines, and 24,000 - 40,000 kg of CO2 per hour.

As Twitter user Matthias Bartosik noted in some similar estimates, the average European car emits 0.1181 kg of CO2 per kilometer driven. So for every hour the Mongolian Bitcoin mine operates, it's responsible for (at least) the CO2 equivalent of over 203,000 car kilometers travelled.  

...Since the average American household consumes 901 KWh per month, each Bitcoin transfer represents enough energy to run a comfortable house, and everything in it, for nearly a week. On a larger scale, De Vries' index shows that bitcoin miners worldwide could be using enough electricity to at any given time to power about 2.26 million American homes.

For the planet's sake, it's a good thing that Bitcoin usage in absolute terms is tiny and not growing, but that hasn't stopped the fervent Bitcoin mining and transactions among Bitcoin users who are hoping their numbers grow so they can cash out during the currency's artificially inflated bidding price. Another problem, as Vice's Christopher Malmo notes, is that high energy consumption is intrinsic to Bitcoin: