On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 12:44 PM, Sean Breheny wrote: > It is a bit hard to get my head around why people would pay US dollars > for "virtual dollars" but there is apparently a sizable virtual > economy going on, with a real exchange rate to USD: > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linden_Dollar How about QQ coin by the leading IM company in China Tencent QQ? It is really amazing that virtual currency can cause great concerns by the central bank. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QQ http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/30/1634218&from=rss http://virtual-economy.org/taxonomy/term/8/0/feed And Tencent is not really an online gaming company. Due to the large online game community in China (it is ruining a large number of young people in China, a very worrying trend in China), the virtual goods have been a sizable economy. In fact, some of the most popular malicious programs in China now steal online gaming accounts and not real bank accounts. Xiaofan -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist