WSE World Stock Exchange all for them

I haven't seen any posts about the WSE here. So I wanted to express my opinion about the experience I have had. I never heard of the World Stock Exchange until Ginko decided to take my 28,000 dollars and put them into Bonds. Not really knowing what the hell that was. I had to join WSE. I read all the how good we are crap and invested into a couple of companies. All in which I come to find out. WSE would be delisting them. GEE what about telling someone before that. Then come to find out one I invested in DON not only was delisted. They were a phantom company. They had to be. WSE quietly made them disappear. Nothing said from the great WSE.

Well let's get back to Ginko. Now I have found if I'm correct, has been placed in an account made up from WSE called, get this WTF. GEE Now I know I was stupid for even getting caught in one scam Ginko. I'm now caught in another scam called WSE.

Yes I write them, but guess what. if you want contact..you go to a chat the is hosted by someone else. If you fill out the form. You have a choice to select the priority. Then what you want to talk about. There's no spot for why am I getting SCREWED.


So, I'm sure I will hear from all the users I should of beware and it's all my fault. But that's only because you haven't been screwed by one of these SL con Artist. Yeah one of you tell WSE I wrote this. Maybe that the only way I can get their attention. O but wait till I get the last of the little money I have out of their hands

Try searching for WSE and Ginko in the forums...you'll find loads of threads....

I thought the WTF transfer was part of the WSE seizing Ginko's WSE assets in a forced liquidation.

Basically since Ginko didn't make its interest payments, WSE foreclosed.


WTF?

Whatever else I did in SL, I wouldn't participate in any in-world investment schemes except land dealing. Whatever the rights or wrongs of land dealing, you have a tangible (or at least clickable) asset. OK, it can go up or down in value, as we've seen, but there is a commodity involved. But, as for money investment schemes in an unregulated world, you might as well just give the money away!

the only way I would ever invest in a SL business would be if I personally knew the business owner and they had an excellent reputation. I would also seriously consider having the RL person behind the avatar sign a document drawn up by a RL lawyer (if the money involved was substantial). Not so different from investing in RL small business actually.

SJ

You have to understand what went on a couple of years ago. I don't think Financial Institutes wanted to go belly up. I think it was SLs big idea to cut the Casinos. I know that's another topic and I understand why they had too. But by doing so, I don't think they took into consideration the repercussion. All the Casinos withdrew all their money. So what once was a smooth operation went into turmoil. But now you have someone like WSE, trying to do some good and they just turn around and do the same. They make excuses for their downfall and say investor beware. But what about a situation I got caught in. I bought in to a IPO name DON..Looked good and the stock was climbing. One day after I invested. WSE announced they are halting their trade. Reason. The have not been active for 30 days. The trading looked like it was up to date. But because the Company itself hadn't posted in the news. They halted them. Did WSE feel the need to tell or warn new investors about this. No, they let investors invest/. Why, because when the company can't come back up, WSE reaps all the investment. With out any liability.

I looked back in all the announcements and DON isn't even mentioned of having been in WSE. Does this mean it was a bogus Company set up by WSE. They won't comment of this. I asked them just to admit there was a company named DON and they won't even do that. So if WSE knows a company is going belly up.. They will not warn any investors. That's a bad way of doing business.

One exchange to rule them all...
And in the darkness, bind them!

WSE, DON et al. These are all entities that are entirely free of needing to comply with anything as troublesome as even one of the many RL regulations governing stockmarkets.

I am very sorry you found this out by way of a loss. Fact of the matter is that without and regulation and safeguards for investors, putting money in such entities seems little better than gambling in a Casino.

I never have and never will put money in such schemes when there is no way to hold the operators to any account for their actions.

I guess my only surprise is that so many people in SL are surprised when they loose their money to these schemes...

ROFLMAO!!!

I did months pre-Ginko take the money, give you worthless bond fiasco heard about WSE in news paper or television thing where they showed this real guy behind it and how it would be the newest big finicial market it SL.
My real question is how slow of news in a business day do you have to be or who do you need sleep with or bribe to become news worthy to make it look your product is legit and get some spin?

People really need to understand that SL financial institutions and companies may have a veneer of legitimacy, but have none of the mechanisms and regulation necessary to make them legitimate, and that SL does not have the structure to properly facilitate such institutions. An SL bank or institution, by necessity due to the way SL works, is nothing more than another person's avatar account, as intrinsically insecure as anyone else's.

The thing is when they get on news as the biggest new thing it make them appear more legitimate then they really are.
No one thinks oh this person slept or paid so and so to get on the news they wouldn't put some scam artist on the local news.

This "veneer" seems to amount to "my avatar wears a suit".

lol...oh god mercy mercy


Oh please OP I hope you are suing all parties........$28,000 dollar?

What a disgrace. You might be stupid, but its not your fault. Go after ALL parties involved. This is evil.

inform the CSI and CNN.

I can make a suit that fits my avatar, please give me all your money.

I think really the risk involved warrants a log-in message now and then, plus a section on sensible spending on orientation islands. Something along the lines of:
"All entities claiming to be Second Life financial institutions are ultimately just another avatar no different from you. While many may be good intentioned and deal honestly, they are not regulated or controlled and as such all transactions with them are done at your own risk."

The alternative is that LL allows these things to happen, and regulates it in some way, since they are the controlling force of the L$.

Except for the Gorean institutions, where attire may well be different.

Anyway, the real root cause is that SL does not offer any ways of redressing fraudulent behaviour. It all boils down to trust.

I can understand the reasons why Linden Labs were forced to prohibit gaming in world, it was no longer a penny and dime operations that in the broad scheme of things could be ignored or tolerated. I visited a few casinos back in the spring and I saw some sites/slots/ games where the stakes were up to around $L100, 000 and presumably the payouts would be in millions of Lindens. Clearly given the US Governments attitude to online gaming and Linden Labs being a US company with the servers located on US soil made the ban inevitable. Indeed if gaming within Second Life was/is legal you would have had real life casino businesses setting up within Second Life that would completely circumvent US legislation.

But given gaming is now illegal, which must clearly impact on many other businesses within Second Life, including the now defunct Ginko and the WSE.

The poster who said all financial services type businesses within Second Life were just another avatar is more or less correct with rare exceptions, that is first life businesses who are authorised to give financial advice in first life, who happen to have a Second Life web type presence. One exception is ABN Amro the bank and fund management group; another exception is me personally, (and only if I choose to advertise) (I am not advertising at present)

In the USA, Europe and the UK you need authorised permission from real life Government to either run, practice and/or advise on any financial service business, and Second Life is no exception. Like online gaming in the USA Second Life IS subject to first life law

It therefore follows that Linden Labs should ban all businesses that offer third hand financial advice using Linden dollars or any other form of currency or worth having
fungible value. This would include all so called "virtual banks" and "virtual stock markets"


The only exception should be businesses authorised to provide first life financial services, which use Second Life as an additional marketing tool.

On this point I am not entirely sure many avatars would welcome such businesses as many of us come here to escape from first life pressure and do something completely different, rather than just walking through 3D first life adverts. Indeed the ONLY first life business that I personally have seen in Second Life that completely "ports across" so to speak is perhaps Dell Island, where you can build/design a new computer taking advice from friends along the way, of which is far harder to do on Dells website.

Finally I recognise that first life organised religion may have a part to play within Second Life, but that is as much about faith rather than pure business. I wish to offend nobody by this last statement, all avatars are entitled to believe and practice what they wish

Once an "IPO" is completed all funds (less WSE commissions) are moved to the company owners.

You obviously haven't read the Terms of Service which clearly state which means that Linden Dollars are not fungible currency. Unless you are the FBI telling LL to stop in-game gambling under UIEGA in which case L$ are fungible currency.

Neat how that works, eh?

The TOS is rather irrrelavant for the purposes of determining what is a fungible currency. The fact that I can right now trade my L$ for other L$ or USD$ means that it is.

Of course LL may inject 20000 Trillion L$ into circulation in the next microsecond and my L$ would be basically worthless, but that is life. The intent of the TOS clause is simply to prevent people taking them to court to recover money if such a thing happened.

If you step back and look at most freely traded RL currencies, very few are backed by any specific asset such as gold (The Swiss Franc is). Therefore they all depend on people having trust that the currency is stable and that the government issuing the currency will not do anything stupid.

If you want an example of what not to do to a previously fungible currency, do a google search under Zimbabwe and inflation.

I'm not quite sure that $L are implied to be fungible currency by the FBI due to gambling.

Here's my thinking - gamblers use poker chips to gamble too, which aren't implied to be fungible currency.

* * * * *

$L really are a new entity. Consider getting them properly appraised. You might have the numerical representation of "ten million US dollars" in $L, but unless someone is willing to buy them all their worth is significantly less.

Also factor in the percent chance that the Company will fold or reclaim them from you, and they certainly aren't worth face value.

fun·gi·ble: see http://secondlife.com/currency/

(the protests of LL notwithstanding)

In all seriousness, I was curious, so I looked up fungibility on Wikipedia. Now I'm even more confused.

The wikipedia definition of fungibility is: "The property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are capable of mutual substitution."

It goes on to say: "Fungibility is different from liquidity. A good is liquid (or tradable) if it can be exchanged for money or another different good. A good is fungible if one example of the good is substantially equivalent to another example of the same good. Fungibility does not imply liquidity, and liquidity does not imply fungibility."

Are linden dollars fungible, or liquid? It seems like they're liquid, since my RL employer can't chose to pay me in Linden Dollars, nor can I go buy a brand new Lexus and choose to pay in Linden Dollars.

Or I'm just not getting it. Please, for the sake of my own curiosity, someone explain

In all seriousness, so long as LindeX or SLX is willing to exchange L$ for US$, they are liquid which is what puts them under the UIEGA auspices.

I posted somewhere else about the UIEGA provisions that specifically include currency proxies as currency so that even online poker games which take turn cash into v-chips and back again are in direct violation of the UIEGA. This provision also thwarts attempts to make Zyngo, et alia UIEGA conformant by using side bets instead of direct bets.

Fungibility - it's an older concept that is having difficulty in the modern world.

For instance corn could be swapped for wheat and it would essentially be the same (unless you are allergic to wheat of course).

But take a commodity like energy in the form of electricity, and things get kind of odd. Stuff that has to be consumed the moment it is produced, or is essentially valueless until you need it (air).

$L definitely has something about it, at least at this point in time. Virtual currency might sound not very insignificant until you read something like this:

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117519670114653518-dn8gNFq5f7FniF4G8iQ_gbzDKug_20080328.html