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Anshe Chung

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Anshe Chung

Anshe Chung is an avatar (online personality) of Ailin Graef in the online game Second Life. Referred to as the "Rockefeller of Second Life" by CNN, Graef has built an online business that engages in development, brokerage, and arbitrage of virtual land, items, and currencies. Her work has been discussed in Business Week, Fortune and Red Herring.

According to Chung, she had already created fortunes in purely virtual currency on other MMORPGs such as Asheron's Call and Shadowbane, but had never converted that to real tender. This changed when she entered Second Life, where the in-game currency, "Linden Dollars" (L$), can be officially exchanged for real money.

In her early Second Life days, prior to founding the business that made her famous, Anshe Chung had a goal of using virtual wealth to support an orphaned boy in a developing country in the real world. With her first Linden dollars she was able to sponsor a boy named Geo from the Philippines through a German church organization. She raised funds through event hosting, escorting, teaching and fashion design.

According to Chung, in June 2004, she began selling and creating custom animations and then used this money to buy and develop virtual land. This is also considered the beginning of her business where, for the first time, she kept and reinvested funds instead of giving them away. Chung currently owns thousands of servers' worth of land, most of which are sold or rented to other users as a part of her 'Dreamland' areas. Within Dreamland, various levels of zoning rules are enforced; most other land in Second Life is unzoned, with multiple different types of business or housing located in adjacent areas. Philip Rosedale, the former CEO of Linden Lab – the company that produces Second Life – has referred to Anshe as "the government" when referring to the role she plays managing her regions.

According to Dr. James Cook of Linden Lab, "Anshe adds significant value to Second Life".

In February 2006, "Anshe Chung Studios, Ltd." was legally incorporated in Hubei, China

In November 2006, Chung announced that she had "become the first online personality to achieve a net worth exceeding one million US dollars from profits entirely earned inside a virtual world".

Meanwhile, Anshe Chung's business employs more than 80 people full-time, most of them programmers and artists. She counts several Fortune 100 companies among her clients as well as high-profile organizations such as the government of Baden-Wuerttemberg and LifeChurch.tv, whose Second Life entry her firm developed.

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