$26,500 paid for property that doesn't exist

When I saw this headline this morning I thought I was still concussed from the super-cool spill I took off my bike last night. Nope, a 22-year old kid from Oz has paid US$26,500 in one fell swoop for a packet of virtual land in the Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG) Project Entropia. Although virtual economies thrive in parallel with our own (see The Guardian's coverage here and here), this is the most money anyone has ever spent at one time in an MMOG. I'd love to have 26K to burn.

While it may seem that this young lad is the one who's got the concussion, actually it appears to be a sound investment of his cash; the game is one of the few (if not the only?) virtual worlds that uses a cash-based economy, unlike EverQuest and its ilk which use "platinum pieces" or "simoleans". The young virtual investor can expect tax revenue and rent from new tenants.

Check out IGN for more details, but head to Terra Nova for, I'm sure, a more detailed discussion of what this monumental event actually means.