Some interesting factoids coming out of the hearings held last week on multiplayer games/virtual worlds like Second Life. The most insightful (in my perspective) having to do with the amount of money that flows out of SL:
To prevent money laundering or financial crimes, Second Life polices the financial activity of its members, and scrutinizes any withdrawals over $10, Rosedale said.
“We believe that the degree of scrutiny that is created by [policing methods] is quite rich and the pattern recognition of non-standard behavior … is easy enough to spot,” according to Rosedale. (Link —>)
Rosedale also goes on to state that the average withdrawal from SL is $1.00 USD. Yes, that decimal point is in the right place. Obviously, SL isn’t going to be that attractive to terrorist or money launderers until there is more noise to hide the signal in. Also, I’d like to see some stats about the average current holdings of Second Life players. Is the average in-game bank account balance $100 or $1,000.00.