Virtual Land Boom

[Evah Baxton]

Metaverse Real Estate Piles Up Record Sales in Sandbox and Other Virtual Realms - WSJ

Is SL experiencing a land boom? Sorry, I did no research on my own.

 

On another note:
Do you think there will come a time when the "SL doesn't look like GTA5" crowd will start wanting it to look like "The Sandbox"?

 

[Coffee Pancake]

15 minutes ago, Evah Baxton said:

Is SL experiencing a land boom? Sorry, I did no research on my own.

There are and always have been plenty of land speculators in SL, they bring nothing of value, lock up huge swathes of property and force prices every upwards as they try to improve their ROI.

This behavior hurts SL. It's notable that none of the land investment virtual worlds have active populations.

Partly why Belli has been so successful, it separates the act of owning of land from those wishing to profit from land

 

15 minutes ago, Evah Baxton said:

On another note:
Do you think there will come a time when the "SL doesn't look like GTA5" crowd will start wanting it to look like "The Sandbox"?

 

Adding minecraft style voxels to SL would be a great, don't let the primitive chunky style distract you from the amazing things that can be done with them.

https://www.wired.com/story/best-minecraft-builds/

 

 

[animats]

The virtual land boom in NFT land is fake.

With NFTs, you can boost the visible price by selling them to yourself at a high price. This is called a "wash sale". That's considered illegal market manipulation for stocks but is legal for collectables. It's very common for NFTs.

If you look on OpenSea, you see a stalled market. Huge prices, low bids, and no transactions. Beanie Babies on eBay work exactly the same way, as I point out occasionally. Asking prices around $5000, actual sales around $50.

(This is going to backfire badly on US persons trading NFTs once they figure out the tax implications. Pumping up the price with a fake transaction may result on being taxed on the pumped-up price.)

Reuters reports that the plot of land in Decentraland sold for 24 million, intended for a mall, gets no visitors. They sent someone to log into the world a few times and check.

The whole artificial-scarcity NFT thing is collapsing. The only part that is likely to survive is selling merch to fans. That only works if you're already famous enough to have fans that buy your merchandise. Nike shoes, NBA team merch, that sort of thing.

 

Edited November 30, 2021 by animats

[Prokofy Neva]

2 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

There are and always have been plenty of land speculators in SL, they bring nothing of value, lock up huge swathes of property and force prices every upwards as they try to improve their ROI.

This behavior hurts SL. It's notable that none of the land investment virtual worlds have active populations.

Partly why Belli has been so successful, it separates the act of owning of land from those wishing to profit from land

 

Adding minecraft style voxels to SL would be a great, don't let the primitive chunky style distract you from the amazing things that can be done with them.

https://www.wired.com/story/best-minecraft-builds/

 

 

So let's see if I get this right, Linden Lab is one of those Silicon Valley businesses that says "No business but my business"? They get to profit from selling "land," but no one else does? They get to make their millions from software like Lotus 123, then for ever after demand that everyone else "liberate" their software? Is that how it works?

In fact, the Lindens don't at all "separate the act of owning of land from those wishing to profit from land". They encourage the buying of their land and the re-selling and renting of it -- that is their bread and butter. As I've explained elsewhere, the Lindens ultimately don't like land, like other technosocialists/technocommunists in the Valley who are millionaires and billionaires but they tolerate it for now.

I personally don't get Uplands, as you buy and sell a RL address that in fact belongs to some person or persons in the RL, and they don't have a say in it, and the valuation is arbitrary. But some people find it an interesting game as a prototype of what they believe will eventually be a "reality of virtuality".

As for SL, to discuss it seriously, I would say there is a land glut now and it's a buyers' market. Liquidation rates are 0.01/ per meter. Back in the day, it was more like $2/meter (remember Sarah Nerd Buys Land, she would put her liquidation rate on her profile every day. Now she's not in the business from what I gather).

Lately when I have let land go there are no bots that come -- ever. Only Witting Witte comes in real time for 0.02/meter because he is watching the "Land for Sale" list in real time, and wants to stay on the top of that list, which he believes helps his overall land sales business. 

I think you have only to look at the late Mr. Sirbu of Xaraz who didn't practice that kind of land cutting and land dumping and still did fairly well.  I think the general public values land dealers who are scrupulous.

So I see land cut up to smithereens all over. I see the Lindens giving abandoned land to a parade of land baron alts who then dump it or crap it up, leaving it to ad farmers. The Lindens are crashing through abandoned land now like Sherman through Georgia, adding to the devaluation of land in some respects, but also acquiring new customers with larger tier holdings whom they would rather have. And you can't blame them, as this stock has sat on the shelves for years, while Lindens dithered whether they could give you a 512 that was not on your sim, demanding that abandoned only go to adjacent land holders. Today, they rush to put prime land on the auctions without ever asking the people on that sim if they would like to buy it -- because they can sell it for more, and they view asking existing sim owners about this as 'too much work". Of course, since they come in real time to sims to reset abandoned land and then again to put it to auction, it doesn't seem like so much work to IM a few people next to a parcel. 

If Blake Sea or land across from Bellisseria is $75/meter, that is meaningless because that's only a small percentage of SL's land mass. It's not a snapshot of the land market but actually a good example of oligarchism, which was begun by Lindens, not residents, when they told a group of sailors who complained about the high price and inadequacy of void and homestead sims that they could buy islands but park them next to contiguous Mainland and have fast sailing sims. This then morphed into lucrative land sales and rentals in Blake Sea and environs. Now we will see the same situation develop with the privileging of one resident group in Bellisseria. The Lindens never seem to get away from this FIC model which I think ultimately loses them customers.

Even so, I do find reasonably priced land sometimes, and I see it going begging -- and getting abandoned. $3/m mountain top in G with beautiful views; $7/meter waterfront in Heterocera. It's worth flying around and being very specific about what you want until you find it, and checking the land carefully to make sure there are no surprises. (Take off volume, check FPS etc).

Nobody likes land barons, but everyone keeps them in business by buying and renting from them because they hold the tier when you don't have it, and are there to buy your land at least for some small amount so that you don't have to abandon it and get nothing. The solution to the land baron problem is not to close the land market but to make it in fact more free and transparent and also more regulated in some respects. For one, post the winners and losers of land auctions -- something the Lindens used to do routinely on the first iteration of the auctions. Then you can see which land barons bid merely to drive up prices and who also win most bids of the most valuable land. Then you can take your business accordingly elsewhere. A deed office would also be useful so that you can see the history of buying and selling on a sim. Also an advertising network run by the Lindens inworld, so that ad farmers are not incentivized to make ugly billboards and also extort sales of microparcels. 

 

 

Edited November 30, 2021 by Prokofy Neva

[Lucia Nightfire]

48 minutes ago, animats said:

The whole artificial-scarcity NFT thing is collapsing. The only part that is likely to survive is selling merch to fans. That only works if you're already famous enough to have fans that buy your merchandise. Nike shoes, NBA team merch, that sort of thing.

The friggin' Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade was advertising its own NFTs, SMFH...🙄

[Crim Mip]

LL loves land barons because they have one account to deal with for a huge amount of land and then all the customer support for that land falls on the landowner, not LL. The other thing is you really don't own anything when you buy land. It's just LL becomes your landlord. Selling an NFT of a parcel wouldn't change that. You'd sell a receipt that said somebody owned the land, but LL wouldn't have to honor it at all. It would mean nothing.

[Nick Winkler]

Regarding Prokofy's reference to Winning Witte. He seems to be gone. Not sure what has happened to residents of his private estate land, the sims seem to be offline. Whatever his goals or intent was, he seems to have flamed out. The harsh reality of tier fees meeting big dreams and intense competition has no mercy. But, that is small potato's compared to what i expect The Sandbox, Decentraland and their block chain, crypto, NFT fellow travellers will be when they crash and burn. The spelling of Ponzi never changes, just the pronunciation. I hope these coming newsworthy events do not reflect on SL.

 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

24 minutes ago, Nick Winkler said:

Regarding Prokofy's reference to Winning Witte. He seems to be gone. Not sure what has happened to residents of his private estate land, the sims seem to be offline. Whatever his goals or intent was, he seems to have flamed out.

Really. I wonder how many of his tenants he screwed over before jumping ship.

I do so love speculative capitalists.

[Evah Baxton]

 

2 hours ago, animats said:

(This is going to backfire badly on US persons trading NFTs once they figure out the tax implications. Pumping up the price with a fake transaction may result on being taxed on the pumped-up price.)

Is this the Unrealized Capital Gains Tax?

[Coffee Pancake]

1 hour ago, Evah Baxton said:

 

Is this the Unrealized Capital Gains Tax?

The IRS are very happy to see NFTs as cash and tax them as such. Handy how all the transactions are on a public blockchain for them to look at.

[Karl Herber]

4 hours ago, Nick Winkler said:

Regarding Prokofy's reference to Winning Witte. He seems to be gone. Not sure what has happened to residents of his private estate land, the sims seem to be offline. Whatever his goals or intent was, he seems to have flamed out. 

 

His mainland holdings in Campbell Coast are still present and still showing him as owner, so it doesn't appear that he's gone. Maybe he's just downsizing his estate?

[Evah Baxton]

4 hours ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Handy how all the transactions are on a public blockchain for them to look at.

Handy. 🤢🤮

[Bree Giffen]

The nft owner can be completely anonymous. The IRS has no idea who owns it.

[animats]

2 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

The nft owner can be completely anonymous. The IRS has no idea who owns it.

Many crypto people think that. They're wrong. https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/irs-turns-to-data-analytics-to-track-crypto-tax-evasion

[bigmoe Whitfield]

2 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

The nft owner can be completely anonymous. The IRS has no idea who owns it.

this is why laws and other fun items are coming into play,  this is not the 80's and 90's or early 2k's.

[Bree Giffen]

10 hours ago, animats said:

Many crypto people think that. They're wrong. https://www.accountingtoday.com/news/irs-turns-to-data-analytics-to-track-crypto-tax-evasion

The IRS has been training its spotlight on crypto users, adding a question to the front page of the tax form asking taxpayers, “At any time during 2020, did you receive, sell, send, exchange, or otherwise acquire any financial interest in any virtual currency?”

In the article this is what the IRS does to track crypto. If you just answer "no" they are in the dark. If the IRS tries to tie you to a crypto wallet address you simply say..."That's not mine.  Prove it". It's called cryptocurrency for a reason.

 

[Max Nova]

The virtual "metaverse real estate in virtual land boom" has absolutely nothing to do with Second Life (Linden Labs). I'm dumb enough to invest in things like Bitcoin when they cost 10 cents pfft... so here it is:  https://www.businesstimes.com.sg/real-estate/investors-snap-up-metaverse-real-estate-in-virtual-land-boom

I have to say (as an old guy) Justin Bieber didn't sell me the ABBAtars did: 

 

 

[Lindal Kidd]

2 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

this is what the IRS does to track crypto. If you just answer "no" they are in the dark. If the IRS tries to tie you to a crypto wallet address you simply say..."That's not mine.  Prove it". It's called cryptocurrency for a reason.

Lying to the IRS is a Very Bad Idea. It's sort of like playing SL when you're too young to play SL. You may get away with it for quite some time, but when they do catch you, the consequences are not good at all.

[Bree Giffen]

You're right. Lying to the IRS is a very bad idea. I would never lie to the IRS. 😉

[VaelFaye]

1 hour ago, Bree Giffen said:

You're right. Lying to the IRS is a very bad idea. I would never lie to the IRS. 😉

Even the Joker knows better. 😜

[Lucia Nightfire]

6 hours ago, Bree Giffen said:

In the article this is what the IRS does to track crypto. If you just answer "no" they are in the dark. If the IRS tries to tie you to a crypto wallet address you simply say..."That's not mine.  Prove it". It's called cryptocurrency for a reason.

The ledgers of most "reputable" crypto exchanges are now under the eye of the IRS. RL identifying info must be attached to exchange accounts if you want to buy/sell/trade.

[animats]

19 minutes ago, Lucia Nightfire said:

The ledgers of most "reputable" crypto exchanges are now under the eye of the IRS. RL identifying info must be attached to exchange accounts if you want to buy/sell/trade.

Yes.IRS: "$3.5 B Cryptocurrency Seized in 2020". The IRS has the cryptocurrency thing figured out.

Even people who tried really hard to remain anonymous and avoided using "reputable" exchanges have been caught.

Answering "no" to that question and being in an IRS database as having a crypto account somewhere is going to be detected.