I'm an online journalist, but I'm not an online journalist. Adam Pasick is - he's Reuters' bureau chief in the virtual online world of Second Life.

• Reuters' Second Life bureau
• Second Life homepage

As "Adam Reuters", Pasick uses his experience as a technology journalist for the news agency to report from Second Life - a world hosted on the internet where users create their own character, then go around doing almost everything you can do in your, well, First Life. You can shop, go to university, talk to others, the works.

Reuters has always had a strong reputation for financial reporting, so it's no surprise that their (inspired) coverage of Second Life is driven by similar motives.

The charts you can see on the left are displayed prominently on Reuters' Second Life homepage. They chart the exchange rate between Linden dollars - Second Life's currency - and the US dollar (top), and the level of US dollar expenditure in Second Life in the last 24 hours. At the time of writing $1 will get you L$271.6, and a truly staggering $458,000 has been spent acquiring L$.

This financial coverage extends to the interviews Pasick conducts inside the game. His latest interviewee is the man in charge of Ginko, one of Second Life's banks - that is, a bank set up inside Second Life and designed to run entirely within Second Life, with little or no real world presence.

As is quickly apparent, Second Life has a working, very real economy to maintain. If Reuters are now monitoring and evaluating this economy, not to mention reporting it (that's why they're bothering - it's all about the money), then it's time to sit up and take notice. In 10 years' time are online currency exchange rates going to get the same billing as £/$?

It's a scary thought, even for somebody whose life is already conducted online much of the time. For companies with no real web presence the concept of entire, grasping, virtual economies - generating millions of pounds - being born under their noses might just be terrifying.