Upward Flow

In order to transfer money from L$ into a paypal account you must first convert the L$ into USD via the Sell L$ options. Generally you will yield a much better rate by doing a limit sell as opposed to market sell See: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:How_do_I_sell_Linden_dollars_(L$)_on_the_LindeX%3F for details on selling L$. Currently selling at L$260/USD should get them sold in a short period of time, selling at L$259/USD should get them sold within a day or so. Selling at any less than that probably won't yeild a result in quite a while. Once you have successfully converted your L$ to USD you must then request a process credit in order to transfer your USD balance to a paypal account - see: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:How_can_I_use_my_US_dollar_balance%3F for details on doing this. Note* Selling L$, ie converting to USD through the Lindex, carries a fee of 3.5% per transaction.

This is an Excellent question, and regardless of some people's misassumptions about the 'proper' place to post such a question, it is one that deserves an outlet since the public jira is not a forum, or a place to actually get answers. Since you asked for what people 'think' (not what they know), this makes this question a good one. Personally, I 'think' that if LL is purposely doing this, it is to stop or hinder the possibility of the auction process getting frozen by massive bids all during the final seconds of the auction (although considering the current land market, auctions are for the most part a joke). In previous auctions, there have been quite a few where bids that were submitted in the last few seconds would just get stuck, and there have also been numerous cases of multiple people appearing to win the same auction - or with bids that appear to have been placed at the same second for the same amount. If in fact there is a 'magic' number of seconds before the official close of bidding as opposed to it being semi-random, then there would certainly be a huge advantage to knowing what it was, but LL is also famous for allowing certain people to gain unfair advantage over others whether it be through inside knowledge or through technological exploits. More than likely, I 'think' such a delay would be to keep the bid freezes and other associated technical issues from occurring in the last seconds of bidding.