Foreign Exchange in SecondLife

While waiting around in the Reuters Sim for Nintendo of America President, Reggie Fils-Aime's interview, I bumped into Jill Kearny. We talked about different investments within SecondLife, and she asked me if I had heard anything about Forex in SecondLife. She'd found a place with the name Forex, but couldn't find anything at Forex.com. Jill Kearny gets credit for this one - I'm just writing up what we found so far.

I did some searching around and found a FOREX Trading event, but no references to Forex.com. Maybe this was an affiliate? So after the Reuters event, Jill and I hopped over to the place (it's actually findable under classifieds). I checked the land ownership and trailed it back to Adam Constantineau very easily. As it happens, he was there so we got to chat with him briefly before the Lindens had us evacuate the grid for the update.

He was busy scripting at the time - trying to get everything set up. There's no link to Forex.com, it's just a descriptive name for what he will be doing - foreign exchange trading. He was very open and direct, explaining that his profits would be made on small percentages here and there.

He says that he guarantees rates traded, and that to save on real life costs, he will be trading on a per user basis. According to Adam, when asked about the mechanics:

The simple answer is that I don't have to trade the real currency on the fly, I simply back the rates with my slush fund.

The profits are made through pips and margins for him, a relatively small percentage but perhaps more than enough to make this a lucrative business and a useful service from within SecondLife at the same time. Adam says that shares have only been open a day and a half - and already 30k L$ worth is sold. Given he was expecting only 10K L$, this is good news for him. It's more slush.

The place doesn't look fancy, but it's not the looks which Adam is focusing on right now. Getting the scripting tested properly seems to be his focus now - and with that much investment already, it's good to see this one man show sweating it out to the last second with the update.

It's quite possible that the time is ripe for such a business, allowing globalization to be facilitated within a virtual world.

I'll be getting back together with Adam to discuss this more in detail - there are plenty of questions which have to be asked and answered, but the idea itself is sound and the fact that Adam was there in a scripting trance when we found him speaks well of the endeavour. We expect to get together tomorrow, before the opening - coordinating his schedule in Australia with EST time.

Thanks, Jill!