Futuramb writes that: The Swedish based game developer MindArk has been granted a banking license – a real one – by the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority (Finansinspektionen). The license will allow Mind Bank AB (a wholly owned subsidiary of MindArk) to function as a central bank for all virtual worlds within the Entropia Universe.

On the one hand this is an obvious step since the connections between virtual/real worlds is getting stronger and eventually currencies in virtual worlds will affect real world currencies. It is surprising that this occurred so quickly. On the topic of real world economies the researcher Castronova published some interesting work a few years ago:

Castronova, Edward. “Virtual Worlds: A First-Hand Account of Market and Society on the Cyberian Frontier,” CESifo Working Paper No. 618, December 2001.

Castronova, Edward. “On Virtual Economies,” CESifo Working Paper Series No. 752, July 2002.

Castronova, Edward. “The Price of ‘Man’ and ‘Woman’: A Hedonic Pricing Model of Avatar Attributes in a Synthethic World,” CESifo Working Paper Series No. 957, June 2003.