What are Ginko Bonds worth?

If you so incline to sell your ginko bonds and someone decides to buy with WIC, you have another problem. If you haven't been to the WIC site, you should. On the left side towards the bottom, you will see the conversion into and from US $ and Lindens.

Some won't catch it, but if you decide to withdraw your WIC through the ATM, you have to have atleast 1.oo WIC and it will cost you $1.00 US Dollars to do so.

I had some shares with other companies and instead of withdrawing them and being charged that money, I bought some other stock and sold them until I could get Lindens for them

There are two perspectives.

WIC was a big promotional item for the game(bling) stocks as a way to play the games, in-world, without lindens. As these stocks get affected by the ban, we can see how that effects the WIC.

The other perspective, which has less do to about WIC, is that if you sell your GPB below value, it doesn't hurt Ginko, as it will only save on debt expense for Ginko. If the money is cashed-out through WIC, we can see that WIC would start to carry some weight on Lindens.

Both of these, if done in ill fasion, have of the side-effect of like taking dirty laundry to church.

WIC currency is being used as gambling tokens?

That was the promoted plan. I like to know if it still is that way.

This is where the U.S. Dollar (or any anonymous exchange curreny) lacks security. One could easily take their dirty laundry to church in real life, as it is so famous in history. In the virtual world, it has to be specifically programmed to be completely anonymous. Virtual realities based churches just might not have to worry about a load of dirty laundry.

I doubt using a third party currency will be acceptable to the Lindens reguarding gambling.

They will likely shut it down anyway.

Holding WIC currency might be as value-less as holding Ginko Bonds.

LL would probably end up banning the WSE in its entirety if that happened, as it would be unable to control laundering illegal funds through both Lindens and WIC. Of course, WSE could always exist independently on the web, via paypal agreements to deliver Lindens, but tracing things would definitely be harder.

Oh, and GTP holders would really be screwed.

Well yeah on the LL side they surely arent going to allow third party currency to get around gambling rules. So the Gaming places that try it will be banned.

And like you said they arent going to put up with organized attempts to break the policy either, so if WSE has to go to easily keep the ban intact , then they will ban it.


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On the other side of the iisuue.

A site that hosts investments directly on the net, instead of through a cover like an online game - is more likely to be investigated by the RL authorities. Im not sure how this works but if you were to start a "GINKO" outside of second life just on the internet, I highly doubt you could get away with it to the same extent.


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WIC isn't all bad, but it does raise alert levels a bit.

Wrong. Ginko's debt expense as you call it is absolutely unaffected by the level at which GPB bonds are trading.

People are trying too hard to destroy the Virtual part of Reality and turn imagination into big bucks.

It's ruining SL. There are plenty of ways people can make legitimate Lindens. It use to be so creatively oriented and imaginative, now, suddenly real world catches up.

So either its a court case to fight for Virtual Reality freedom and throw out the real world money angle, since all fictional, or stick with a real world money conversion that will always clash with the Laws of the Land and let Virtual Reality be policed.

It's a game. A creative game. Why does it have to be just another commercial avenue. Perrenial Hucksters are always going to be trying to scam money.

Solution is obvious. Pay subscriptions--no more free. Remove the selling back lindens for real money feature. Firmly state TOS violation for selling lindens for dollars. Let people set up fictional gambling casinos if they wish. IT's not real money! Its not the real world. It not illegal to play gambling games for tokens of no real value other then game monopoly money, in a fictional Virtual Reality.

Change Advertising strategy. Instead of pushing SL as great for big Entrepreneur/Hustler's dreams. Sell it like it use to be, a creative place for artists, dreamers, designers and script writers, film makers, and the fun loving. etc.

This has to change fast. Not making this banking mistake right, by paying the loss, is pretty bad. LL needs to print some L$'s since in the real world they would be accused of creating a run on the bank.

If this causes the price of land to go way down, then so be it. Too bad LL can't pay their expenses in L$

No thanks. There is currently no "end game" that would make this worthwhile.

Your opinion.

Some people are into Sl for money and some aren't. Problem is, it is not going to fly in real world laws. Having a real currency, banks gambling, etc. is not legal, the way things are Sl can be the lawless, wild wild west or a sleazy market of money scammers. No thanks. "No End Game" there. Sl should just be a fun place to be and be creative and a Virtual Reality as it is.

This has been discussed at length in other threads recently (notably, something about "Would you still be here if you couldn't cash out?". I, personally, would be perfectly satisfied if SL had no way of converting in-world creative content to real-world currency. But if that were the case, I'd have never heard of SL. And it would be a much smaller place, with much less content, because many creative folks wouldn't be motivated without the prospect of some RL compensation. And as long as land in-world has RL costs, without a way to offset those costs, most of the Map would be blank.

The idea I find most puzzing is the (apparently prevailing) notion that IP rights should be protected in-world, but absolutely nothing else. This makes SL a weird kind of Objectivist-Libertarian social experiment--but RL laws inevitably cross over, as we've seen with the Bragg case, for example, or kiddie pixel sex. Eventually, something like Ginko will seem as quaint as a Wild West shootout--it's kinda up to LL to decide whether SL will be an historical footnote or part of the metaverse that supplants such lawlessness.

You call me flat out wrong? Then you are saying Ginko will be hurt by the trades, but then that would be hypocratic statment you just made. Hmmm...

I suspect something is getting lost in translation somewhere. As I understand it, the point was that the bond dividends (the "interest expense" is unaffected by the base price of the bonds themselves. That's true, of course, since the dividends are fixed in L$ terms, not as a percentage of the current market price for the bonds. But it's also true that if Ginko Guy's alts buy up lots of GPBs at bargain-basement prices, dividends for those bonds could be laundered back to the payer (or not paid at all--although that would be especially fun to explain to the court-appointed auditor).

We got to start somewhere to build a new economy. I'm sure you can share the suspicion that current real-world exchange markets put a lot of pressure on virtual world economies to hold them back. Many governments rely on their money exchanges to hold onto more power than they should. Take that money control away and they no longer have the ability to cash a blank check backed by no funds or create new debt and hold the citizens accountable for it.

The demand on natural resources makes it inevitable for virtual world exchanges to exist firmly in real-world portals.

what new economy?

This is just the same old scams, different day.

You have been flat wrong earlier in this thread. Please give us all a break.

"Inevitable," but not today or anytime soon. Humans will live on Mars too. Humans have to change first. As it is now, the Virtual just reflects the Real, more everyday.
I don't think that's the real attraction of Second Life, except for those seeing it as a way to make bucks, instead of have fun, be creative and all the combinations inbetween.

If I want the Killing Floor I can play Warcraft, if I want a Boileroom I can look in the classified ads in the real world and sell all manner of Multilevel Huckster schemes.

Dang this thread gets so negative.

Oh I know of bigger scams than what happens here in the virtual world. Take the U.S. child support, for an excellent example. Where is the money going? The custodial parents (those with the kids getting child support) claim that they don't receieve enough as they should. They only get about 1/4 to 1/2 of what the court orders. The non-custodial parent has his or her wages garnished, so the non-custodial parent pays 100% or more of the child support, but the custodial parents receieves less than 50% of it. Where is the other 50-75% of the money going?

Right into the pockets of the state workers?

But wait, the state workers blame the non-custodial parents and threaten them with jail for the custodial parent not receiving all the money the court order. Remember that comment I made about how the state workers jailed u.s. soldiers as they got back from Iraq due to arrears acrued while on duty.

Pocketing 50% from every non-custodial parent out there happens to turn out to be a tens-billion dollar business for each state -- bigger than what credit cards companies can get in credit fees.

Again, where is the money going?

Thats government bloat, rather than a scam per se.

The government is actually making any money on the deal. They need it all to keep their inefficient system running.

And you have to also consider what percentage of required parents actually do pay what they are ordered to.

Pretty small is my guess.

I have two brothers-in-law who are are tens of thousands of dollars behind.

Wage garnishment is standard order. The parent has no control of what is being paid, as the non-custodial parent never even gets the money.

It's a scam because the state claims bad percentages in order to promote tougher child support laws, but the money is never being used for child support.

When do the kids actually receive the money? It all being kept by the state.

Next time you hear bad percentages from the state, be sure to ask them to compare money taken from the non-custodial parent and money given to the custodial parent and check and see if it is the same. I bet 99.9999999% of the time, it is not the same.

Go ahead, find out exactly how much was taken out of the checks and compare it to how much you their ex's receive. Not the same.

It's true the the percentages are bad, but it is not the fault of the non-custodial parents... its the middle man, the state, that doesn't pay from what is taken. If it look at it from the fact that non-custodial parents are paying (and not based on what the child receive), the percentages are very high you find very compliant non-custodial parents.