Is somebody manipulating sell orders?

[Amethyst Jetaime]

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Rya Nitely wrote:

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

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 I really think that with the change in the "Buy $L's" screen is at least partly to blame with more buyers using the 'Best Buy (Limit Buy)" rate and demanding more $L's for their RL money.  

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Amethyst, there is a 10 point gap between the best limit buy and the best limit sell. Therefore the best limit buy order will never be filled by the best limit sell offer. They have to match for that to happen.

This is how it works. Limit sell orders are filled by

Market

buy orders. A market buy order is when the buyer does

not

set a price, but will accept the best limit sell order. These are mostly people who buy in the viewer (the majority of buyers). 

The limit buy orders are filled by market sell orders - sellers who don't set a limit sell order but will take the best limit buy order. These sellers would be selling at currently 271.

In this market, it isn't a case of people demanding more L$ for their dollar, because the vast majority of orders are small market buys within the viewer, and not limit buy orders. If this was not the case then the two sides (buy and sell) would need to meet (be equal) before any transaction can occur between limit orders.

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I know very well how the Lindex works and that most buyers and sellers just use the market buy/sell option when they want instant results.

I also see many questions in the answers section from people who 'bought' Lindens using "Best Buy" and wonder where their money is.  It's not unusual to get several a day from people who have no idea how a limit buy or sell works.  The fact is that most of these people offer not enough RL cash for the $L's they want.  

That's not to say that there are other people, probably a lot more, that make offer for a bit more $L's for their money that are willing to wait or that have their offer's taken pretty quickly.  It's these people that could very well be driving the price of $L's down.

What is your explanation for what is going on?

[Rya Nitely]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

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I know very well how the Lindex works and that most buyers and sellers just use the market buy/sell option when they want instant results.

I also see many questions in the answers section from people who 'bought' Lindens using "Best Buy" and wonder where their money is.  It's not unusual to get several a day from people who have no idea how a limit buy or sell works.  The fact is that most of these people offer not enough RL cash for the $L's they want.  

That's not to say that there are other people, probably a lot more, that make offer for a bit more $L's for their money that are willing to wait or that have their offer's taken pretty quickly.  It's these people that could very well be driving the price of $L's down.

What is your explanation for what is going on?

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The vast majority of people in second life don't know how the LindeX works, and many only think they do.

I wonder how many people look at the buy and sell side and think that those are the only orders. The vast majority of orders are coming from inworld market buys. These are a constant flow. These buyers do not specify a price and are getting the top rate on the sell side (260). Most of the activity is happening on the sell side, and we don't see it unless we watch and refresh constantly.

 

 

I agree that more people (those who actually visit the LindeX) are seeing and using the limit buy option. But this increase in limit buys would not be enough to have the impact we've seen over the past few months. Also, that more obvious limit buy option was not there when the devaluation started back in May when we saw things sky rocket over a few days.

This is huge serious money. Nothing else would cause such a drastic sudden change. If it was so easy to infuence the LindeX we would not have had a steady rate for 4 years straight.

I believe the huge amounts of L$ being pumped into the sell side are from the most powerful people in SL -  the owners.

[Amethyst Jetaime]

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Rya Nitely wrote:

I believe the huge amounts of L$ being pumped into the sell side are from the most powerful people in SL -  the owners.

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Looking at the current Sell side, I don't see unusual amounts of money there and the highest amount is for $261.  The market rate now is $260.  So your theory makes no sense to me.  Although the market was relatively stable for the past 4 years, both those rates have been the rate in the past many times.  You can see this for yourself by going here: http://gridsurvey.com/lindex.php?page=51.

Bottom line is that there is no conspiracy going on here IMO.  The rise in the Buy rate started shortly after LL announce the grandfathering deal.  It's most likely that a lot of sim owners decided to sell $L's collected as rent to finance the deal. Now Limit Buyers that understand the Lindex are used to getting more $L for their money and offer accordingly coupled with all the new people being lured in with the new "Best Buy" screen without understanding the Lindex.

 

[Rya Nitely]

In this thread it seemed to me that you misunderstood how things worked. When you say this 

'You can wait until the cows come home but you won't sell your $L's unless someone is willing to buy them at the rate you want' 

The majority of buyers are willing to buy it at any rate that is being offered. They don't influence the rate.

 

 

[Rya Nitely]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

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The rise in the Buy rate started shortly after LL announce the grandfathering deal.  It's most likely that a lot of sim owners decided to sell $L's collected as rent to finance the deal.

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Sim owners have been selling L$ to pay tier and take profit for as long as they have been sim owners. Any money to finance the deal would be either fresh US$ or profit not transferred to Paypal. But the L$ selling would be business as usual, not hoarded L$. I've been involved in discussions here and in SLUniverse where sim owners confirmed this.

[Prokofy Neva]

Well, keep talking and keep asking questions. 

This is a big hit and for me it means every day a loss of something like $10 or $15 US on cashout and then multiple that by a month and it's a huge hit for a little business like mine. People who sell creations can just jack up their prices; I see gatcha sellers making pulls like "$58" instead of $50 to make up the difference. But rentals agents can't do that as easily. That is, sure, you could purchase scripted rentomatics to do this globally but it's another matter whether your customers will accept a price hike. They have cheaper Linden dollars, but they're seeing prices go up on things that they used to buy cheaper. This is the most expensive Lost & Found round I've seen ever, for example. $500 and $600 items when it used to be $250 or $350. 

The question to ask Ebbe Linden, who thinks this is the "market" is whether or not Linden Lab continues its practice of selling "printed" Lindens to keep the rate artificially cheap. 

THAT they had this practice we know for a fact from the creators of the LindEx. So does it continue? Yes or no. If yes, why on earth would it be necessary to cheapen the Linden to a 10 or more point spread???

Next question: do Lindens captured by LL on the Marketplace count in their system as sinks or sources? Sinks -- burned cash not a profit to them which makes a tighter money supply and sources -- revenue for them. Simple questions requiring answers. MP used to be a sink, but given aspirations of metaversal magic and making income from content not land, has LL turned these sinks to sources?

It's not the sim buy-down, I hope everyone's over that nonsense by now.

[Spica Inventor]

LL may be flooding the market again with Linden Dollars to compensate for the overall dip in  SLM sales right after the new search came on line. It would have been done with the intention of improving the economy and stabilizing things of course. Since LL is not price pumping anymore on the SLM, I would suggest you long time SLM merchants, that used to have a big advantage with total sales pumped by high relative prices, swallow your pride, and bring your prices down in a hurry so that you can sell more and by so doing climb back up to the crucial top of relevancy search results again where sales get multiplied due to ranking position and human nature. I've seen my sales triple over this time last year since about a couple of weeks after the initial 'shock dip' after the new marketplace search first came on line, and it must largely be due to my pre existing low relative prices.

To grow SL again and therefore their profits, many merchants have got to stop overcharging for their products and focus more on sales by volume instead imho.

Think longer term. :smileyhappy:

[Rya Nitely]

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Amethyst Jetaime wrote:

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Rya Nitely wrote:

I believe the huge amounts of L$ being pumped into the sell side are from the most powerful people in SL -  the owners.

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Looking at the current Sell side, I don't see unusual amounts of money there and the highest amount is for $261.  The market rate now is $260.  So your theory makes no sense to me.

 

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When you have an increase in supply, and demand is unchanged you get devaluation. If there was a huge sell order (of freshly printed L$) a week ago it would be circulating within the SL economy now.

[Deira Llanfair]

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Nalates Urriah wrote:

There are some great imaginations here... but, the market data shows everyone is pretty much misunderstanding what is happening.

https://secondlife.com/my/lindex/market.php

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The table lower on the page shows the average quantity of L$ traded and the max quantity. The max is about 1.3 mil. So, no one is trading 'millions' on any given day.

 

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You are a couple of decimal places out - that table shows the max volume traded to be over 105 million L$.

A couple of years ago there was a similar situation and it was caused by LL indulging in an amount of "Quantitative Easing" - presumably because they thought it would help business.  However this time, some of the movements have been so sharp, I would have expected the cut off to be triggered to stop trading.

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[shaniqua Sahara]

ebbe recently said last year 60 million dollars was redeemed. so how much money laundering can be taking place?

if 60 people redeem 1,000,000 = 60,000,000

600 people redeem 100,000 = 60,000,000

6000 people redeem 10,000 = 60,000,000

60,000 people redeem 1,000 = 60,000,000

does it seem far fetched 1500 people made 40,000 last year? which of course would mean no one else redeemed money.

there doesn't seem be too much room for laundering. not that i'm making any kind of conclusion, i'm just saying.

[Deira Llanfair]

I agree with you shaniqua - I was just pointing out the mistake in reading the table being referenced.  However, I do remember, years ago, there used to be monthly stats published showing how many traders fell into bands of L$s traded.  Last time I saw them there were just a hundred or so making meaningful money in real $.  They were a handful of currency traders, some big land owners, such as Anshe Chung, and big businesses such as Pixel Dolls.  That was when SL business was strong and I certainly have noticed a large drop in business over the last 2-3 years. I also recall that when a similar rapid change in currency rates occured (a couple of years ago), it was caused by LL undergoing some form of "quantitative easing" - so there could be a number of contributing factors - but I don't think money laundering is one of them.  A money launderer would more likely pick bit coins these days.