Top 10!

Hahaha, I made it to the Top 10 list of Blogshares!

I had a pretty start after the crash in November, and I was almost ready to give up when I was encouraged by a few friends (notably StreetDogg) to start trading again. Within literally no time at all I had amassed a couple of hundred artefacts and was back in the race. December saw me reach the top 100 and then this week I had the nerve to tackle the biggest blog in the system (which was shortly afterwards to crash resoundingly back down to earth, more on this later). After a very nerve racking day of constantly checking to make sure I wasn't going to be taken over in a nasty struggle, I made more than B$700 billion after divvying up with Hanz Boer (who subsequently lost his shirt trading on the same blog the next day). That got me to the top 15. Receiving a gift from a very generous benefactor who is taking time off to spend time with his family (very commendable) boosted me 8 places into the top 10. Considering the fact that all the big cash cow blogs have pretty much disappeared from the game, this means that I will probably stay in the top 10 for some time to come.

So, what happened to the big blog? BlogSkins.com News had what they call a share discrepancy (basically more shares than were officially registered) due to a lot of trading and, quite probably, exploitation of a bug in the system. Each blog has 5000 shares, 1000 of which are reserved for the owner. The maximum share price allowed for selling is based on the number of shares officially listed. This means that additional 'faulty' shares are not taken into account. In all other counts, the shares are the same. This means that the price of the shares can be pushed to the limit and then sold for an enormous profit.

The problem is that you can't buy and sell the same shares within a six hour period, so it means waiting a long day to be able to cash in. Since everyone wants to get in on the action, it is also a very nerve-racking day, especially when I had an important meeting just before the time when I could sell (which is also the time that the most attacks occur apparently). In any case, I sold the shares and quite a few people made some money on the deal. I was going to trade on the same blog the next day, but they fixed all the discrepancies, leaving the blog almost worthless.

There are now no blogs which will earn the kind of money being earned on 'Skins', as it was affectionately known, and therefore the ranking is probably fixed for quite some time to come. I must say that playing skins was my most exciting day of playing blogshares and I shall miss the fear and the thrill of playing for such high stakes. Even if it only virtual money: I couldn't have been more involved if it were my own maoney at stake.