http://themetaversejournal.disqus.com/Australia's premiere virtual worlds news serviceenSun, 22 Apr 2007 12:05:31 -0000http://www.metaversejournal.com/2007/04/22/hope-capital-the-debate-continues/#comment-1320176<p>The future of the WSE is certainly an important issue for the future of the SL economy and confidence residents will have with financial institutions in SL. Some regulation by Linden Lab may need to be considered.</p><p>To simply claim that L$ is a virtual currency and so we need not worry is a genuinely serious concern. Residents either buy or earn their L$, it's not 'play money' and it is readily transferable to real currency. Linden currency is close enough to real currency that SL business ethics should be also linked to real business ethics.</p><p>With all the emotion and heated rhetoric put aside, I do hope that confidence in SL stock exchanges, whether or not that may be the WSE be restored as soon as possible.</p><p>Linden Labs should consider some minimal requirements for external sites that transact the L$ requiring among other things regular backups of data, SSL encrypted authentication, full transaction and auth logging and some site hardening. In RL millions of credit cards details are stolen from poor site related security. I hope steps are taken to prevent the theft of L$ due to lax website security.</p><p>Just as in RL, possibly some competition will allow people to vote with their feet and pocket book, and for a better overall product to be provided. Companies can then choose to list on whichever exchange is worthy of their and their investors trust.</p>DanteJones LaszloSun, 22 Apr 2007 12:05:31 -0000