I didn't believe it but it's true...

[avevale_intelligencer]

People are selling EVE Online money on Ebay.

You send them real money--I've seen up to a hundred quid quoted--and in return they send you Monopoly money (in vast quantities, true, but a hundred million nothings is still nothing).

James Branch Cabell was right, and Nyronds are truly redundant.

Comments

[armb.livejournal.com]

One could claim that if it's freely tradeable for real money, then it is real money....

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Only if you can also trade it freely for a real-world cheeseburger.

[armb.livejournal.com]

If you can trade it freely for dollars or pounds, you can trade them for a cheeseburger. In fact (AIUI) the trade isn't really free, and at the moment I'd say it's probably a bit less of a real currency than various Eastern European currencies were back in the days of the Iron Curtain.

Interesting paper on the EverQuest economy: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=294828
To some extent I suspect this just shows that if you apply definitions of economic terms to things they weren't really intended to cover, you get unrealistic results. I haven't actually read the whole paper though, just seen commentary.

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

Or Germany between the wars. "Big Mac and fries? That'll be one million ISK, sir..."

[armb.livejournal.com]

And if, say, the company running Eve suddenly announce they will be moving onto a new game and money won't carry over, then the real world value of Eve money will collapse even faster than that.
Other interesting comparisons might be mining company tokens that can only be spent in the company store which is the only store in town, and cigarettes in prisons.