Of course they were virtual cards, that's what a "Magic: The Gathering Online" Exchange would be.
I think the confusion is that some people parse it incorrectly as "Magic: The Gathering" + "Online Exchange" rather than as "Magic: The Gathering Online" + "Exchange", so think that it was (planned to be) an exchange for physical rather than virtual cards.
The problem is, it paid off. We've all been saying "Um, maybe doing major financial exchanges with an outfit so unprofessional that they do business under an initialism for 'Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange' isn't such a great idea." And now it turns out we were 100% right. So...there's no joke anymore. It's just historical fact now.
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At the very least, maybe this overly clever joke of showing off that you know the original name of the service will finally die with it.
The best part about that joke is there is no remotely convincing evidence that the site ever actually was a playing card exchange.
Assuming a (presumably incomplete) scraping by archive.org is "convincing evidence", it was originally an exchange for virtual trading cards.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070525044536/http://mtgox.com/...
Of course they were virtual cards, that's what a "Magic: The Gathering Online" Exchange would be.
(But actually MTGO has it's own de-facto virtual currency - tix - which are regularly traded for cards through the MTGO interface.
I think the confusion is that some people parse it incorrectly as "Magic: The Gathering" + "Online Exchange" rather than as "Magic: The Gathering Online" + "Exchange", so think that it was (planned to be) an exchange for physical rather than virtual cards.
Which is 'in beta' and never had anything else on that home page.
It's just a placeholder text.
Irrelevant. The joke is that they're such a bunch of incompetent goofballs that they couldn't be bothered to change the name.
there is plenty.
That's what I said, yes.
The problem is, it paid off. We've all been saying "Um, maybe doing major financial exchanges with an outfit so unprofessional that they do business under an initialism for 'Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange' isn't such a great idea." And now it turns out we were 100% right. So...there's no joke anymore. It's just historical fact now.