GOM acquisition completed - relaunch by end of 2006

In reply to last month's thread
/130/ab/134904/1.html

GOM swapped hands in August 2006.

I am currently rebuilding GOM. The software has been rewritten from scratch - with nothing in common with the old GOM.
The new company is going to be incorporated in the USA and regulated by the SEC.

I'm looking for people willing to take part in beta-testing the software/website. Please contact me via IM.


What is GOM's mission?
Our mission is to establish GOM as the most liquid Linden Dollar (L$) market. We encourage daytrading and speculation to stabilize the Second Life economy/ L$ exchange rate.


What are the new features
Short selling
Instant PayPal withdrawals
PayPal deposits using Mass Pay
Bank Wire deposits and withdrawals (cheaper and faster than checks)
Real Time Trading
etc

What will it cost me to trade?
If you are selling currency, we will charge a flat fee of 0.50% (i.e. SEVEN times less than Lindex).
If you are buying currency, we will charge you NOTHING.
Plus we don't charge you if your order is not filled - there is no listing fee.

What localization of the website will be available?
English, German and,as soon as we expand to other MMO's, Chinese.

Best regards
Anton Chirkunov

(btw GOM Pilote is my alt.)

GOM's fees may well be very low and enticing, however, as a business owner, I am more concerned with the total fees I will be charged than the fees charged by any one company or group.

I want to confirm that it's possible to :
1) convert L$ in my SL account to USD in my SL account
2) convert L$ in my SL account to money in my RL, EU-based bank account
for less in terms of *TOTAL* fees by going through GOM than it would cost me to do the same but going through Lindex/Paypal/etc instead.

GOM's 0.5% fee may be very low, but if, in order to achieve #1, I have to pay GOM exchange fees and *two* sets of paypal transaction fees, then it may well work out that simply going by LindeX is cheaper.

Similarly, GOM may not charge much in case #2, but paypal charges about 6% in fees to transfer money via my country, and I have a lingering grudge against Paypal because they treated me very badly/unfairly in the past. I can get L$ converted to funds in my EU bank account for 3.5% LindeX fee + 15USD LL cheque fee + my bank's currency conversion fees. Can a combination of GOM and Paypal beat that? It will be hard to beat, given that Paypal + GOM seems to have a basic rate of about 6.5%.

If you can show me the math that proves the TOTAL fees for either #1 or #2 will be less, I will probably consider using GOM.

I. You can turn USD from your GOM account to your Second Life account.
GOM will charges you 1 USD for withdrawing funds to your PayPal account.
Afterwards simply increase your Second Life account credit here:
https://secondlife.com/account/manage_balance.php
Linden Lab won't charge you any fees.

The transfer is instant. Total cost: 1USD

II.
Why use PayPal + GOM? Use Bank Wire + GOM? (cheques are obsolete)

I cannot tell you yet what the fee would be - my lawyers are arranging the bank we will work with - but I think 15 USD per international bank wire is doable.
In this case, you would pay 0.5% GOM fee + around 15 USD bank wire fee

It *could* be international bank wire fees are even lower - but in any case much faster than LindeX - think of around 2 to 5 business days.

If you process credits as fast as GOM used to (within hours)...you will have all my biz. I will be happy to participate in a beta Lee, I will IM you in world.

amen processing in hours ...hell im on board!

I would be happy to participte in the beta as well, I am glad to see Gaming Open Market is returning.

[left]I really liked the old GOM, and if you recapture the usability of that I'm very interested.[/left]
[left] [/left]
[left]I have yet to cash anything out (believe it or not) but if I get a chance I may try some test transactions. Don't include me yet but mark me down as watching with extreme interest.[/left]
[left] [/left]
[left]I'm having a real hobby-vs-"take it seriously" crisis, and if "take it seriously" wins, you can bet that I'll be incorporating, or integrating my SL activities as part of a corporation I already have.[/left]
[left] [/left]
[left] [/left]

I'll have to know a little more about the folks involved before I give my biz.

There was more to GOM than a name - there was a trust shared with the users.

Reposted from elsewhere:

Fucking A!

And I never say that stupid phrase.

GOM was awesome. I was so pissed when LL stole it. That's part of the reason why I went on my hiatus.

If they come back and they're anywhere as good as the old thing, if not as better as this suggests, I will be having an orgasm indeed. You've definitely got my business.

I'm interested. Count me in for beta testing.

I agree that calling something GOM does not GOM make, but you sound like you're full of good ideas and have the spirit of it anyway . As soon as you have some documentation, specifically of the legal sort, post it or a link to it. I had some friends that enjoyed currency trading for it's own sake. We would enjoy starting that back up if we feel you're conducting your business aboveboard. I realize you have to establish relationships and history first, hence, count me in for beta testing .

Good ideas, yes, but will it be truely GOM? The biggest thing for me was the trust. I trusted them, and in return they trusted me. I do like the idea of having cross-platform trading. Just don't get in trouble with the other TOS. That is one thing that I have been missing since GOM stopped dealing in all other currencies. I would like to be a beta test, if you won't mind.

It's too bad the old guys aren't involved. That was the thing that I liked most about GOM - I had the benefit of getting to know the old guys, and I felt they were generally good people and I could trust them.

I am, however glad to see someone picking up where GOM left off. I'll be keeping an eye out.

Best of luck to you, I hope we all get to use the new GOM soon 3.5% is definately a bit too greedy.

--
Francis

I have no particular interest in any money exchange facility for the games I play - however if you do succeed, and will truly GOM the Lindex, that would be somewhat of an achievement.

Lewis

It is especially greedy when the length of time it takes to receive payment keeps going up, without explanation. LL, however, gets their 3.5% immediately.

You just gotta love the concept of GOM ... GOMing the Lindex!

I can't wait to have a look at the new GOM.

PayPal withdrawals are processed instantly.

There is a last issue regarding the GOM brand/name:
Altough I purchased gamingopenmarket.com - I think that this domain is too long.
There are two alternatives:

gomfinancial.com (which was in use by Jamie)
and
gomtrade.com (which was registered by myself not that long ago).

I tend to use gomtrade.com (and simply redirect users from the old domain to the new one)- which is shorter and simpler to spell.

What do you think about it (I need to decide quite early because of the SSL certificates)?

Following person have submitted interest in beta testing - if I forgot someone - please reply to this thread:
Smuk Zaftig
Nowun Till
Osprey Therian
Rickard Roentgen
Dnate Mars
Stroker Serpentine

So what's next?
By the end of next week my lawyers will issue a definitive answer (around 28th Oct). Afterwards I will deploy the beta version as soon as possible - the hoster can have the servers up and running within 2 business days (around 1 Nov).
I'm on a business trip from the 4th to 10th of November (in China btw), but I should manage to supervise the beta test anyway.

Okay so I see people interested to sell on GOM ... where are the buyers? How will it compete with the built-in buy interface of SL? Btw LL will be pretty happy if high volume sellers leave Lindex so that they can sell more new $L (hooray for cashcows!)

You are absolutely right. There will be enough sellers willing to sell on GOM.

Finding buyers is more difficult.

We might add an interface trough the F1 help browser. Login with your GOM credentials, enter the amount you wish to buy and get the L$ you just bought within one minute (as long as you have enough USD in your GOM account.) I think this might be a subject for a brainstorming.

Besides this, there are perhaps people not wanting to use the Linden Lab way of getting billed (i.e. PayPal / Credit Cards subscriptions).

Well the numbers of buyers would really depend on the ease of transaction for buying L$.

If USD can be deposited from Paypal to GOM INSTANTLY, I would be using GOM for sure to buy L$ for my business operations.

Kavai

PayPal deposits (Send Money as well as MassPay) & withdrawals are INSTANT.

Lee...we all wish you the best of luck. Transparency is the key. As stated earlier, many of us knew Jamie personally, and were all benefitting from his commitment to customer service. If you build the new GOM with customer service as the #1 priority, I will promise you that you will be a success.

Currently the Lindex has no venue for direct contact of those involved (Lawrence Linden? Jill Linden?) so if you have an issue with your account your only recourse is the email black hole. I could be mistaken...but is there any mention of an email addy or a support address for the Lindex on the main webpage? I think not.

Thats my $L .02 worth.

Booyah! Will you be placing GOM terminals inworld? I'll host one.

Thank you for the offer

However terminals are not reliable enough.
GOM uses direct deposits (Simply pay the GOM avatar) and direct withdrawals (request a withdrawal from the GOM website).
Deposits are almost instant - they might take up to 3min (because Second Life caches the transaction history).
Withdrawals are processed within 30seconds.

The cool thing is that your scripted objects might deposit funds directly onto your GOM account using llGiveMoney.

The only reason why a terminal might be required is to link your avatar to your GOM account.

However, since libsecondlife has been bug-fixed in the past week, I might re-implement libsecondlife, which will make terminals totally useless.

What about HUD?

There should be no reason you couldn't use a HUD to buy lindens on GOM.