I had an idea the other day that I think I am going to pursue as a type of experiment to prove the value of in game currency. The game I decided to choose is runescape just because it offers a widely open market that I have experience with in the past and there is also a robust secondary market for gold sellers. This way I can easily track the value of the fund and compare the profit or loss week after week.
Essentially what I want to do to prove the value of runescape in game currency is to invest it in an array of different items in the game and track the market prices. I will be starting with a large amount of gold to begin with, I haven’t decided how much, most likely one billion, which will be used to purchase a basket of goods and speculate the price. I will also be trying to corner some markets and push the value of the items I have up. I want to make sure I have an exposure to a lot of goods in order to keep liquidity a priority.
The amount of gold I have will have a value tracked to the gold selling value at playerauctions.com, which is a gold seller website that specializes in regular people, not companies. Most people think that in game gold is worthless and I want to prove it is not. The goal is to make returns that outpace the in game inflation which can be a huge issue over time. The amount of gold I have isn’t a good metric because in game inflation means over a period of time I might lose the purchasing power of that gold.
The game goes through periods of time with deflation and inflation, usually because they have periods where they do massive crackdown on players that are botting the game. In periods where there aren’t a massive amount of items that can sell for gold coming to market, you start to see items rise in value. In times where bots are everywhere you will see that prices of goods shrink dramatically.
For the vast majority of the money I have, I will just be buying and speculating on items, but for a small part I will do basic trading and market buyouts. It really just depends on how much time I have or want to put into the project. I will already have to read about items and updates on the forums to see if certain items will most likely drop or raise in value in the future and speculate accordingly
My ultimate goal is to prove that even the currency of a game that people play for fun and most people don’t look at as a financial product, can be turned into one. The basic point of economics is that anything has a value as long as someone else is willing to pay for it and that is what I will prove. I am not going to release what items I purchase until the experiment is complete, because the market is global and doing so could affect prices. However, I will be keeping a log and making sure to copy everything down. I will report back in a month on the updates and see if I have been successful at all.
Good idea. I wish you luck.
Dude, oldschool mil is worth $1. This means, that each 10k you pick up is 1 cent. I used to play with that mentality, if I were to get a drop that's above 10k I would think to myself that I just picked up another cent.
Its just an experiment, so Im not looking to make a bunch of money off it, just grow a %
Any excuse for more gaming, right? XD
youre not wrong ;)
It can, it really can. We need a game where people can buy and sell items for steem. And have blockchain items.
Yes, this needs to happen! Someone please!!!
waiting for the update post ;-) great idea!
Looks like you got a nice plan for yourself. Nice post.
Runescape is reason why I believe in cryptocurrencies. In Runescape are rare items (party hats, santas, ...) which have limited supply (never will be any more) and I remember whole pruce run up. At 2001 these items was worthless, was dropped at ground and every can picu up it. General store price was 1gp. Now street price is in milion or bilions gp. When I recognised bitcoin, I told me, its rares from RS. My plan in RS was buying every junk (marrentil seeds for example) and wait for price increase in future. It was pretty good working.
It's a great analogy. I played Runescape as well and it was interesting to see how people behaved around these rare items. I think the only rare item I had was a rubber chicken but it was untradable. :D
The rare goods don't have a lot of uses - just a store of value and a status symbol. Actually cryptocurrencies have much more - medium of exchange, smart contracts, doing stuff in a decentralized way etc...
I see a lot of similarities - there is a limited amount and from time to time, someone loses it or destroys it... In the meanwhile, money is constantly generated from somewhere - in real world by the central bank, in the game from NPCs etc. You have to work, trade (or alch longbows) for money. Then you can either buy something useful for it (an armor in game, a car in real life) or you decide to spend it later and exchange it for something better to keep the value. Because there are new and new players entering the game, commodity items (such as armor) become cheaper and cheaper.
But there are also some differences between Runescape and real life - rare items cannot be divided, there are no taxes and there's only one single currency in Runescape. Gold behaves differently compared to real life. If something really bad (a hack) happened in Runescape, the game operator can decide to reverse it and restore from backup without the risk of something like an ETH/ETC split.
However, the biggest and most important difference is that in Runescape there were just a few days when Jagex (aka the government) centrally decided to release some items. In the real world, everyone can create their own "rare item", a new cryptocurrency. And it requires a lot of studying to predict which crypto makes the most sense in the long run.
Sure, you can filter out the shitcoins and the ICO ponzis... But how to decide whether to trust in Bitcoin, or Litecoin, or Ethereum, or something else. I honestly have no idea. I don't feel like buying a little bit of all the top 20 coins... even though it may be one way to do it. For example recently I made some money with Ripple but I don't like Ripple because to me it's a weird combination of currency and a "rare item". Ethereum is too reliant on one person, Bitcoin has been in an internal conflict for a long time, Litecoin seems more like a temporary solution rather than solving something new...
Sounds pretty interesting, I'll be waiting to see your conclusive post
I like your idea!
You would be shocked if you knew, how thriving the economies and markets on virtual games like runescape actually are.
It would be really interesting to see how cryptocurrency is going to Influence the economy of Mmo's like this.
Ahh I still remember the days I kill cows for their Hide. Poor Cows. Although there might be better ways to earn gold. xD
Ah! Super cool project @calaber24p, looking forward to seeing the results.
This is similar to selling your MT in 2K17. It's a very feasible idea.
You are best . better n more gaming.
I will upvote you , please you will follow me .
Cool idea, I can see that field growing a big deal.