In real life money (currency) may be exchanged for goods and services - on E2 XP is exchannged for nodes (goods) and votes (services).

XP is what may capture a newbie noder, or keep you going through the hard times (when you should be studying for exams which start tomorrow... no wait, it is tomorrow, they start in 25 minutes -- and you have yet to start studying... better node your experience first!)

XP is the battle for recognition... people strive to attain good XP. Unfortunately like all things, the harder you look, the better it hides! At first you will try hard to write decent writeups to get XP, but once that wears off (in some cases it fails to wear off, leading to serious noding deficiencies, like endless, ill-formatted, non-hardlinked, mass paste jobs which are frowned upon...) but when it does wear off, you will just node without being so worried about XP. That is when your nodes will become better, and your XP will accelerate...

In any case, XP is what keeps E2 going to some extent! Decent writeups will lead to increase in XP - you will be rewarded! And with your reward will come higher levels and more privileges within the E2 network!

Well, actually, you receive no real privileges for higher XP or levels. Just more votes and user cools that can be dispensed this way or that depending upon your mood or your sense of civic responsibility to E2 or both. No executive washroom, no golden key, nor a bigger better monitor or RAM. All that you get is a greater sinkhole of time reading nodes and writeups.

Sound good?

Don't care because you just like Everything and everyone?

Whatever.

So just node for the ages and have fun.

If XP were a currency, would you not have to exchange XP for votes? We get votes without reducing our XP. We give out cools without giving away XP. There is no reduction of XP, except if you write sucky nodes or incur the immature wrath of a bored asshole with spare votes

It would be nice to exchange XP with others. It would be a little more personal than C!ing someone. Hum, one for the Everything Suggestion Box.

If XP is the currency of E2, I can't wait to see the inflation rates...

But seriously, XP will soon become massively undervalued. If I just sit around and use up all of my votes, I can gain about 20XP a day... (Level 4 noder). As you raise through the levels, the amount XP you can get by doing this raises (0.5 x the number of votes you get per day, plus 0.2 times the number of votes).
Here's a small table to show how much XP you can gain daily by using up your votes:

• Level 1: 0
• Level 2: 7
• Level 3: 14
• Level 4: 21
• Level 5: 31
• Level 6: 42
• Level 7: 52
• Level 8: 63
• Level 9: 73
• Level 10: 87
• Level 11: 105
• Level 12: 140

As usual, e&oe, but these are my calculations for how much you will gain daily for using up your votes.
See Voting/Experience System for more information.