My thoughts;
Have a server shop so as to set a baseline price. you dont need to hard cap the prices if the server will buy it. (example: If diamonds become crazy common you can sell them to the server for say 50vt each. no one would sell them for less because they would lose money.) and in that way the soft cap will help regulate prices of all items. And on that note have the "market" have a market price. so diamonds sell to server for 50 and marker price is 75. that way you can afk sell items for a higher price if they are in demand. it also will make compitition in a small way. if its not on the market you can people who are on to sell their diamonds but they can charge more because its not in the market. it will push for live transactions and player interactions. have the server sell a few items (any wooden tool. maybe stone tools. some basic stuff. maybe 10 coal per day per person at a high cost)Make the server prices always be the worst so that you want to buy and sell to players. server coal may be buy for 25 each and sell for 5.
Other ways to make monies. It is my opnion that we need classes. scarsity makes profits. but in minecraft everyone can do everything. And the creative players go unrewarded.
Make a kit system for classes. you choose a class and are locked into that kit/perks. you can spend vt to change class as a moneysink and to help people do as they want.
So like a miner gets free stone picks. or maybe a stone pick with infinate uses.
A farmer gets say one free farming kit a day. (Farming kit includes One stack of 10 saplings of random varity but all the same ((Takes more then one day to get all tree types. maybe add rarity to saplings?)) and a random stack of say 10 seeds. and a stack of 32 bonemeal)
A construction worker gets A basic tini world edit (twedit lite)
So say im a farmer. on my lot i want a barn and a small home. i hire a construction person to build it. the builder buys / gets materials and builds the property. a server mod or admin inspects the work and awards vt based on complexity. the buyer pays on a tip system with a minimum of 50% the amount the admin/mod had the server pay.
So as a miner i can throw away cobble or i can save stacks and stacks of it to sell in bulk to a builder. that way everything can be used for profit but you may not have the space to do so. then there is diversity. i can be a low "tier" miner who sells cobble and some coal/iron. or i can strip mine and only go for good stuff but because i have a forever pick i never need to go up thus i toss out my cobble so i can keep mining.
Merchants would also be a nice class. they can change the market value by maybe 10% as well as get prefered spots in the market. they would be land owners who will buy a few lots pay to have homes build then sell the lots with homes on them for profit.
Thats all for now
