100 BILLION Inf?!?

So, I was reading some posts here, and a few times I saw references to 100-Billionaires. If I understand the limits correctly, we can only have 2 Billion Inf. on any 1 character at a time, right? So, if someone actually has this much Inf., do they have 50 alts each capped, or is their in-game mail full of $2 Billion e-mails to themselves?

When transactions happen for items over 2 Billion, like Gladiator 3% Defs, how do those work? Do you do 2 trades, for 1 billion and 1.X billion, or what?

Thanks for any info/clarification...

To store the influence, I know one method used is market transaction bids. You make "X" number of bids at "Y" for an item that adds up to 2 billion. The "Y" value is what you are comfortable making on said item ensuring that you don't accidentally buy them by mistake. For example, bidding 200 million on a Gladiator 3% recipe is a fairly safe bet at the moment as the going rate is near or at 2 billion itself. Doing this, you can "store" 2 billion influence in one market transaction. Currently I have one character with 27 market slots so, if I had that kind of influence, I could theoretically store 54 billion on the market in that single character.

In reference to how 2+ billion sales occur, they take place outside the market. Usually someone posts a thread here in this forum saying that have one for sale at X amount and someone else buys it. They meet up in game, funds and recipe are switched, life is good.

Another thing is what exactly qualifies as a 100-Billionaire. Obviously you count cash on hand. Everyone here counts cash in email and bids that are never meant to fill, as those are used to store Inf above the 2B cap. Most people here count outstanding bids, as those can be cancelled for cash on hand. But there's more than that.

In RL a millionaire is not someone with a million dollars in cash, it is someone with a net million dollars worth of assets at current market value. As such many people here count Enhancements and other rare stuff stored in bases, as it can be sold. Some people count Enhancements slotted on chars, as even those can be unslotted and sold. I consider all of that to be Net Worth in this game. Unfortunately you can't convert Prestige back into Inf, so no one counts SG Ownership in their worth.

I've never had 100 billion influence on hand, probably the most I've had is maybe 20 billion or so, but if you count what's in my base and what's slotted on my characters, I'm easily a 100-billionaire I think.

Also I'm an example of a marketeer that rarely stores influence in bids that I don't intend to fill, but instead markets with 25-35 different characters.

It's not a big deal. I have billions spread out among my toons on all servers.
I try to keep it off-market when possible (getting harder) and whatever I do I keep it out of e-mail save for the short time it takes to alt and pick it up. This keeps me from losing it if the mail or market systems glitch.

I wouldn't miss a couple billion that terribly. But I'd rather just not lose it and have to hassle over it in the first place.

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Thanks for all the info. I assumed a lot of this worked the way you've all confirmed, though it never occurred to me to store money in the AH with bids, that is clever!

I'm at about 1 billion now, but am just a few Emp Merits away from getting my first Glad Armor to sell, and wanted to make sure I didn't do anything stupid my first time out!

I appreciate that advice, though I will most likely come here to sell it, as opposed to listing it in the market and losing 200 million inf in the transaction.

Personally, I don't think the whole enhancement converter thing will have a significant long-term impact on the market. In the short term, it will drive up prices for previously unwanted purples, but over time the demand for the big ticket items that nearly every build benefits from (+HP/End Procs, +Def) will continue to outpace supply by enough to keep prices around where they are now.

I can't deal with anything more than about 10B or so. It's just so monumentally unwieldy--and when you already own everything you want or could need...what do you do with it?

If there was a better sink, or storage system, I'd definitely get back into market gunning.

There are ways to do sales over 2 billion that can guarantee that no one gets screwed. Most of the time it isn't worth it, but if you're really worried about it, here's what you can do. It requires that the person selling the item have quite a bit of money though.

Person A is selling something to person B for 2.5 billion inf.

Person B trades 1 billion inf to person A in return for 2 purples each worth 500 million. Both parties have goods of equal value.

Person A stores the inf in some manner (email, bids on item that doesn't exist, etc.)

They do the same thing a second time. Now Person B has 4 purples worth 2 billion inf and person A has 2 billion inf.

They trade a third time, with person B putting up the last 500 million plus the 4 purples that person A gave him, and person A putting up the item that was originally being sold.

The trade is finished, and both parties are insured against anything happening, since all steps involve trading goods of (roughly) equal value.