The SL Times Blog

Now with a new name!

Archive for July 17th, 2006

Philip Linden Announces Economy Changes

Posted by Simon Lameth on July 17, 2006

Philip Linden announced this morning that there will be changes made over the coming weeks on the LindeX and for Premium account stipends created after July 21st, 2006.

(Posted on Philip Linden’s Blog [secondlife.blogs.com/philip])

Stipend Changes

New Premium accounts that are registered on or after Friday July 21, 2006, will have a weekly stipend of L$400, down from L$500. Stipends for current Premium accounts are not affected by this change.

Selling L$

As a dynamic source of L$ in the Second Life economy, Linden Lab is going to sell a measured amount of Linden Dollars on the LindeX exchange. We want to continue to give the community as much transparency into our methods as we can, short of providing information that allows people to take unfair advantage of market trading opportunities. We will begin selling Linden Dollars on LindeX on or after July 24, 2006. The following restrictions apply to our LindeX trading:

1) Sales will not be secret. We will trade only from the account name Supply Linden. Our sell orders will always be visible on LindeX, and the supply of Linden Dollars sold by Linden Lab will be displayed on a separate line on the Economic Statistics page.

2) Sales will not be market-sale orders. Supply Linden will list only limit-sell orders. We will not sell Linden Dollars through market-sell orders.

3) Sales will have restrictions applicable to currency tier traders. Supply Linden will start trading under the limitations of Currency Trader Tier 2. This tier is limited to US$10,000 selling per rolling 30 days, and also limited to US$5,000 per day. Further information about currency trading tiers is available at https://secondlife.com/currency/describe-tiers.php.

4) Sales will be volume-restricted based on LindeX volume. In any 30-day period, we will not sell more than 5 percent of LindeX volume in the past rolling 30 days.

5) Sales will be volume-restricted based on Linden Dollar sinks. In any 30-day period, we will not sell more than Linden Dollar sinks in the past rolling 30 days.

All of these limitations are subject to adjustments, but all adjustments will be announced at least 10 days before taking effect.


LindeX Exchange ‘Circuit Breakers’

In addition, effective immediately, we are establishing “circuit breaker” trading halts based on movement (positive or negative) of the average exchange rate in any given day, as follows:

>10 percent in any 12-hour period: projected 1 hour halt

>20 percent in any 12-hour period: projected 2 hour halt

>30 percent in any 12-hour period: projected close until noon the following day

Averages will be determined for these circuit breakers at least once per hour. We continue to reserve the right to halt LindeX at any time for maintenance, or to investigate system misuse or malfunction. In the event we determine any automated halt period to be unnecessary, we may recommence trading prior to the end of the projected halt period.

As LindeX becomes an increasingly sophisticated product feature, we will continue to evolve these and other measures.

Posted in Economy & Business, News From LL | No Comments »