What are Ginko Bonds worth?

An interesting point.

Before Linden Labs banned gaming on the basis of advice they may have received from the US authorities, an interesting point I (and some others) made was connected with the concept of emanate domain.

In other words (until the gaming ban) nobody had legally answered the question "Where am I," when I stand (via my avatar) in say Dreamland, Caledon, or the Mainland.

Am I (legally) in the UK (and subject to UK law ((and relevant US law via the physical location of Lindens servers) OR am I in a separate "place" or country which (within that separate place) would not be subject to existing first life law. I would comment some EU countries have opened quasi embassies within SL

The gaming ban partially answered that question. Linden Labs and SL are subject to US (and other) jurisdictions.

On that basis financial services both here in the UK and in the USA is subject to fairly strict law.

Linden Labs by refusing to in game legislate it by applying US first life law (or completely banning it) is potentially as much at risk legally as the gaming issue.

On that basis I fail to see how any unqualified avatar can set themselves up as a "banker" OR how the WSE can legally operate. On the issue of the WSE I think it would need to be recognised as at least an OTC market maker in real life to trade.

Setting up a bank or a stock exchange, is fine, if the whole thing is fictional and in the realm of our imagination, in a virtual reality, where the real world location does not exist. The entire Sales Pitch for joining "Second Life" is that it is all a imaginary, fictional world/universe...but one more piece of the sales pitch to join SL was that people could take Lindens they made in the game and cash them in for real money, so the next logical thought to the "business pros," is, "I can make money in this imaginary, virtual reality....think I'll become a Land Baron......or...I'll make a Bank and a Stock Exchange and get rich in real life or..."

The whole, "Linden can be exchanged for Real$" thing, makes the $Linden into a unbacked, real world, currency with LL having a complete monopoly on the "printing" of the money at the source.

They can print out whatever amount they want....and convert it into cash. Nice work if you can get it. A money machine. The whole inadvertent, $Linden reality is far more twisted, then just a few residents starting banks in order to convert a little money into investments as part of an experiment in virtual high finance. Countries don't allow, an individual or entity, to have an unbacked currency to use for exchange for real money. The real world currencies are ruled by currency laws. You can't just Print it out of thin air. (only the goverments and the licensed, integrated banking mechanisms can do that)...and they don't even name their money after themselves like LL does. "Sorry, Mr, L." they say, "but there is only room for one rich uncle, Big Brother in this country and we're it. Pay up if you want to continue with what you're doing and we need to send in advisors. Meet Agent John Linden." " He vill take your name and vital statistics and serial numbers.

Poor SL, people will wreck it and turn it into the 3D equivalent of a $Spam Universe$, like the internet has become, and have it all become no different from Real Life. Can't keep the Linden exchangeable for real money.

I wish it would go back, to being "real" about being "virtual."

We all need to reach out in front of us and touch the screen and realize it is a real screen with real pixelated images. Yes, it is real. What your mind comprehends of all you see in-front of you is virtual being that it isn't really 3D because it is only 2D. That may change in the future with 3D projections as now or yet sci-fi holodecks.

I read somewhere that Second Life originally was called Virtual Second Life, but someone decided to drop the 'virtual'. Where is that story...

BAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!

*blinks, wipes eyes, reads again*


BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAH!

0

Would it be marketing prims, commercialism and advertising?

It is true that many want to devout their affair of time to create and share, but there is also the foundation that needs to be build in order to support such affair of time.

most consise and accurate post on this thread.

Why. Wont. It. Just. Die?

*napalms thread*

It had actually sunk to page 4 or lower this morning. I'm so used to this thread being on this forum that it seemed something was missing so I did a search for it to see if it had gotten locked. I came back a couple hours later and it was at the top of page 1. Its being bumped now with timed responses me think at this point hehe.


I am assuming it will get a lock when it results in massive "forum lag"

I say we all have a run on the bonds....buy them all up and raise the price to the moon. Pay off everyone that had a loss, and then petition LL to prohibit the exchange of Lindens back into real money.

Buy them all up... and then end up holding the bag for what? It is not a stock. You can't take over Ginko and clean it up by buying it up and kicking out management. If anything, you help Ginko out even more.

And as for the no cashing out thing... watch the creativity dry up and then this place becomes like Sony's Home. You can start the petition, though. I won't sign.

When the Dot.com stock market started to become badly unhinged (2001/2002 for the real bad times) a few people in the UK thought by buying up all the "new technology" now penny stocks they would make a killing. This was to be achieved by two things, firstly normal supply and demand of stocks, and secondly by so called "value" seeping through and changing perceptions.

All that happened was that the big holders saw a chance to off load at the expense of the smaller investor, AND a few more astute private and city investors took a chance and shorted all technology stocks en mass.

The only few stocks they (shorters) took a bath on to my knowledge was Google, Ebay, Amazon, and in the UK Lastminute.com, although surprisingly the absolute ultimate penny stock, QXL also recovered at a later date.

I personally do not see Ginko in the last paragraph class, all I do see is a guy in Brazil who got in over his head and Linden Labs distancing themselves from the de-buncle.

It is VERY hard to accept a loss BUT in some cases it can be wise to do so and learn from it and move on. I learned that lesson in real life investing a long time ago. In particular I remember a lady poster saying it was hard to pull out the knife. And on share BBs some threads on loosing companies went on for years

My own views...don't chase falling stocks because the knife will cut you, unless the fundamentals change.

they are worthless bits of tat ....with no value at all ..... your money has gone to a different place... pretty much other other over time in interest payments.

No one would be holding the bag, but the residents can help those that took the loss by giving them their lindens back and put an end to that debt then delete the bonds and let ginko die naturally.

I don't beleive that creativity will dry up with no more real money exchange. I think what that would do, would provide a better future for SL and help insure that there will still be a SL to be creative in.

Lowest common denominator will prevail in SL if it's about money.

Buying up all the bonds only shifts the loser from one bondholder to another. It bails out the original investor, but at whose expense? It doesn't make the bond go away.

I won't say that all creativity would go away, but it would be a far less prolific world.

the history of how sl ended up with a real money lindex

when this game was built beta testers faithfully tested it for free and the linden has no value at all. Then it was released to the population and a premium account charge was required and no one bought it and second life was dead dead dead. Then they gave the Ip rights to people but this still would not get anyone to actually participate in second life. So they decided to give real value to the linden dollar and rebuilt sl and released it to basically waht you see now with the lindex. Then and only then when their creations were given monetary value did second life actually get people who would pay for the product and buy sims and land.

Linden Lab could not make this game survive without giving the linden a dollar value and second life is what it is today as a result of their decision to give the linden a dollar value and create a lindex.

They didn't give the L$ a dollar value, and the Lindex only came much later.

well according to dan linden they did i watched an interview on how secondl ife became what it is today and they only way they could make it float was with creation of some monetary value for things unless he is lying which i have no reason to believe he is.

The first release failed and the game didn't take off until they lindex was introduced and according to what i heard second life was floundering and in danger of failing until this lindex and dollar value occure at which point second life took off and not before. Before the introduction of the model we have today the population of secondl ife was miniscule.

the interview link is somewhere in this forum somewhere and I have no reason to see why he would lie ?

I don't mean to put words in anyone's mouth here, but I think I'm detecting just a kind of terminological difference between Ordinal and Wilhelm in the just prior posts. I'm pretty sure SecondLife was quite successful before the LindeX, but only because there was an earlier mechanism (a third party exchange, I think) for monetizing the L$. Before the L$ was exchangeable, I can't imagine more than a handful of Bay Area geeks had even heard about SL. And technically, LL doesn't give the L$ a dollar value--that happens in the market--but of course these days Supply Linden does a pretty remarkable job of maintaining exchange rate stability.

technically we dont but then gambling would not have been banned if they had and this thread would not exist if the linden didn't have value.

They tried to buy some money processing site or something for selling lindens first I think is how it went (i can't remember the name) and they did a few things first before they settled on the lindex of their own, but from everything I have ever heard second life was very small and was not doing well until they started making it so you could make money off of it. It got noticed and started experiencing explosive growth as a result of moving to this type of model. No in general people were not interested in a platform you could just build objects on etc with the exception of a small small population . It simply did not work.

they were sorely in danger of failing on the release just after their beta testing was over (gives me a chuckle when they refer to beta because most consider SL one big beta hehe). They tried a bunch of things and the first successful thing was the ip rights but still this did not foster any real growth. The growth happened after as I put it the linden had value. Maybe that's not a good way to put it but basically they turned around and said "hey you can make money with your creations now" and that's what fostered the growth. So in looking at that if you remove the lindex and dont allow people to convert lindens to US dollars the population would plummet and probably hang around the number that they had previously and LInden lab was not surviving with that small user base. If they were surviving then there would have been no need for them to make the move to having a lindex money exchange type deal to convert lindens to dollars (of course then ginko would be a non issue cause no one would have lost a cent ^^)

So is the interest on the ginko bonds due soon?

I'm curious as to if he blows you guys off again, or pretends to care...


*me makes 5% per month on my own*

The bonds pay quarterly. Got a while yet to see if they will actually be paid. And not with new money.

In other words, you want Linden Lab to take everyone else's money (which represents real life investments of money, time, and talent) so you can be a bit happier about Second Life.

That's one of the most amazingly greedy things I've heard in SL to date.

To be frank that is not a very good idea Rebecca.

What you are asking people within Second Life to do is to:

a) Bail out Ginko depositors by using their own real in game/platform cash to buy bonds.

b) Accept when they have done paying for bailing, to also accept an additional levy which in effect would wipe out their remaining in world assets by prohibiting Linden dollar exchange to US dollars

c) Carry on paying tier in real US dollars to Linden (if they own land)

Methinks that is the ultimate non-starter.

An alternative is:

a) Require Linden Labs to bail out Ginko depositors via virtually printing Linden Dollars.

This would cause instant inflation in world, and would also result in pressure on the LindenX as folks sell Linden Dollars for US dollars (rough calculation $L240, 000,000 being sold.

Again all active Second Life residents with an economic interest would be paying.

Also it would create a precedent bias re business failure in the financial sector giving an expectation all future failures would be compensated.

Again this is in my own opinion a non-starter.

-----------------------------

My own views are simple.

a) Ginko depositors should consider their position and make an individual or collective decision to seek first life legal advice. I am UK based but I seem to recall US subjects have a legal concept called "class action" LInden Labs could give consideration to providing what ID verification they have on the Ginko founders to a US to a US lawyer, if requested, with appropiate legal safeguards

b) Linden Labs should review in world financial services such as virtual banks and stock markets and either ban it OR require that the person or group offering such services be duly authorised to provide financial services in first life. Also as a "once off" Linden could consider helping the WSE to achieve some first life legal standing as a recognised OTC market maker in real life.

I am tempted to print this post off and send it to Linden Labs chairman, Mitchell Kapor the Lotus 123 founder.