The MMORPG Project Entropia will begin taking applications for beta testers beginning March 1. I mention this primarily to clarify something I wrote many months ago questioning the legitimacy of the game.
Specifically, the game has a pseudo-banking functions which lets you exchange real money online with other players in an interesting attempt to create a market-like system within the game. I was originally very skeptical about the game given the numerous regulations on money transfers.
Anyway, it turns out my skepticism was unwarranted and that this and similar online pseudo-banking schemes are at the moment not covered by banking regulations within the United States. PayPal, for example, also falls outside of the U.S. banking regulatory structure.
This state of affairs is unlikely to last long, however, as agencies which are used to spying on bank transactions are already lobbying to bring these new economic experiments under the same umbrella of regulations, but for the moment they’re completely legal and relatively regulation free.