Ginko Has Not Allowed Withdraws For Over A Day Now...

Bloody hell, the mind boggles. Must be a good business for some.

More seriously folks this reminds me of the dot.com boom years.

You know.....that great company with a web site and a fantastic idea, plus a business relationship with Microsoft that consisted of a legal copy of Office...........

Having said that Google started in a garage, and in a similar vein I have no doubt Second Life could possibly be attractive for legal off shore banking by reputable companies, assuming Second Life stands the test of time.

Hence my interest and seeming membership of this committee

Linden Bank? LL Bank? Second Life World Bank? Those names create the impression of an official Linden Lab service. I wonder what LL might think about the names of these... uhm... banks.

Dogs self-replicate if you let them. That way you can get self-replicating turds.

of the ones I looked at, most require you to be a member of their group. many clearly spelled out on their websight how they make money (their a land botter and/or currency speculator-broker) and how mutch they take out for expenses

You can add NN bank to the list, 0.125 daily interest.
Too bad their ATMs won't even tell you your balance, just a "server error 404" message since almost one week. The owner last login being july 27th it might just be a technical problem though

wont happen, even though those other banks are doing the same as ginko. the SLBBC for some odd reason have had ginko must die attitude ever since i been a resident. i know thats not saying a lot, but with other banks practically offering the same rates as ginko, you'd think they'd be just as hot to scream ponzi at them. but no, its ginko ginko ginko. makes you wonder don't it.

Business?

Not quite, unless the turds do the replicating, hence the "self" part. Last I checked, dogs don't replicate via the turds they dropped, so....

Bzzzt! You are the weakest link... g'bye!

Whoa whoa whoa... let's not confuse the issue. Svar did provide a list of twenty-one /other/ banks but Ginko is the only one that starts with the letter G.

If they actually do have a bona fide ("legal" method of making the kind of money to support those interest rates, then great! If they have investments which are making book plus expenses, and are turning a profit to boot, that's awesome.

Otherwise, they are Ponzi schemes as well, and eventually will come crashing down if the owners don't skip world before that time.

Some of the ones on that list may already be defunct as it is.

Without regulation, there's no downside to running a Ponzi scheme or any other kind of scam/fraud in SL, unless LL decides to step in and enforce the ToS on them.

Even still, none of this changes Ginko's situation one whit. It is in deep kimche and, unless it gets its act together, will be "goned", and soon, too.

Well, most of the money is already gone...taken out to "invest" in rl investments.

Cracking me up.

You know, I might start using that. Since whenever you call it the other "P" word you get fifteen people who don't understand the term telling you that since OTHER people have said that and it didn't collapse for six or ten, or fifteen months after THEY said that, it can't be, you know... one of those.

It's a Portocarrero scheme from now on. Somebody put it on EncyclopediaDramatica.

A couple reasons for this.

1) Scale. If you point out that the little ones are doing it, everyone in Ginko says, "But we're with Ginko, it's bigger and older." So Ginko gets targeted because if you can prove it for Ginko, then what just happened will happen (Svar did some searching and in one fell swoop named the other 20 or 30 and it's pretty hard to argue with the fact that they're doing the same thing in a lot of cases).

2) Publicity. People who write want people to read their stuff. So you write about the examples with the broadest interest when you have to pick between 30 otherwise identical examples.

3) Value to Community. Exposing Ginko saves more people more money in the long run than exposing Adam's Craptastic Bank of New Brittonia.

Three does not a couple make. Three's a crowd. Shame on you, Ben!

Ginko math. Sry.

SL Bank (I think) came in for a lot of BB talk a year or so ago. I think they are still around but unlike Ginko they published their RL ID from the start, and provide some type of accounting so you can see if and how they are making money.

Although I would have thought their RL stock market investments would have taken a dive just recently die to general market conditions relating to the CDO (sub prime mortgage) fall out. The Dow and FT are well down.

Unless of course they were short rather than long.

It is only natural people debate investments in real life as well as “investments” within the Second Life platform, including the whole run of takeovers, mergers, and sharp rises and falls in value.

To be frank if you take public money from all comers either by selling shares in your business, or by taking deposits, you do loose the right to some privacy, unlike Jo or Jane Bloggs with their little self owned cottage industry either in real life or Second Life. People take judgements because it effects them financially directly or has knock on effects even if they are not directly involved.

For example if Ginko goes under it may impact on both land prices across SL as well as the Linden/US dollar exchange rate. IN VR terms there is a shed load of money that just possibly may go to money heaven, which has to have an effect somewhere.

From Ginko website:

"We have implemented a withdrawal queue, to help everyone get their money fairly. The queue will be processed on a first-come first-serve basis, as soon as funds become available throughout the day."



This seems to make it fairly safe to assume that the bank is paying off the people in the queue with deposits by new suckers..err...I mean investors.

To paraphrase - YOU - what evidence do you have that Ginko is - and always has been - a Ponzi scheme?

Classic case of the pot calling the kettle black!

Pot, meet kettle.

It *may* be a Ponzi scheme. You *may* be right. BUT - you have about as much evidence as the poster who you challenged. And it *may* be making those rates of return. He can't prove it, you can't either.

If you disapprove of others making absolute statements they can't PROVE, I suggest you also stop making them yourself.

I doubt that many people are depositing any money in Ginko now so it will remain to be seen if the big depositors will stay with them long enough for any recover at all or the bank will slowly wither away since no depositors means no bank.

Just remember people what is happening with Ginko can happen to any other SL bank given the scale of withdrawl seen since the gambling ban. In fact be careful that with all the new compitition the banks don't try to create panic for their rivals by setting up several large accounts and then withdrawing them all the same day.

It would appear time for real banking regulations within SL and only LL can do that.

Yes even if we apply the logic of the "anti busy body committe" then according to the "anti busy body committee" which says the loss is due to the casinos etc then there is no money in "the bank" using this logic one can see that there are a couple things wrong

firstly he doesn't seem to have anything to liquify or itwould be done by now at least a bit but the machines seem to have been closed awhile and the interest rate is dropping

another thing when I tried ginko out to see what it was all about it was called a bank. The selling point is it was a way to safely store your lindens and earn interest. Usually well where I come from you can take the money out of the bank your not investing it your sticking it in a bank the bank may borrow your money but the moment you go to the teller to ask for it they have to give it back. Even in real banks if its a large sum of money there is maybe a 1 day delay max long enough for them to press buttons to liquify something quickly so you can walk away with your large withdrawal.

next also applying hte logic of the anti busy body committee if theer is a problem because of the casinos and crap then it may imply he was heavily invested in them so guess what? there is no money cause the casinos went bye bye

no matter how you slice it the "banK" which should be able to hand you your withdrawal amount in a timely fashion has no funds to do this with.

So at this point even those who are the least jaded and most trusting (i put myself in that category i tend to be one of the last to point fingers) would have to see something has happened. It may or may not have been ponzi scheme but one thing is crystal clear there is no funds period end of sentance. Yet presently we have bonds being sold bonds being sold to a bank that clearly has little to no assets at this point in time. What do these bonds back? How will they have value? Well even little old me can see that well the bonds are worthless at the present time.

Is the money going to be invested from these bonds? well no because people want to withdraw money so the money from the bonds will go towards the withdrawals and the bonds money wont be used to invest. This alone if it was not a ponzi scheme in the past (and truly i do NOT believe it was someone will have to prove to me it was but until such a time as there is proof i will err on the side of "trust" here and say that he just screwed up royally and didn't see the casino shut down coming that many were seeing when they started in on the classifieds) is now a ponzi scheme.

In any event even the "anti-busy body committee" will have to acknowledge a couple of things

1) there is no money
2) there is no money due to something that occured
3) to get more money he has to find some so the money they take out will be that of other new depositors not theirs and then the depositors are going to be screwed cause the money can't be invested unless he stops withdrawals totaly for at least a month or so to invest it and the cycle will soon repeat itself.
4) any present assets are less then what is needed to keep the bank afloat cause if there were enough assets then there would not be this problem

in any event its been like a week or so and people still cant seem to get their money



sincerely
Wilhelm Neumann
"proud member of the busy body committee"

They put your withdrawal request in a queue AND

1. Deduct the money from your account immediately.
2. Pay no interest on the detected amount.
3. You still don't have your money.


What a sweet way to eliminate debt.

Well, the interest now is .01% which is like nothing...

On their total assents thats like 58 buck a day in interest they have to pay on around 600,000 US dollars. Even if Ginko just put the short term money in a money market account, they would be able to cover the cost...but the doors are STILL closed.

Hmm, I wonder where the money is?

Hey there!

I am the owner and manager of SL Bank. Yes, I did post a lot back in the day when the “Land & Economy Forum” was live. But today, it is against LL TOS to simply chat on the forums. Because you said, “SL Bank?” I’ll consider that a question and verify. I do, however, still post on Second Citizen.

Today, SL Bank works a bit differently than it did when we started just over a year ago. As you know, Second Life has changed a LOT over the past year, and we have had to adapt to these changes. We still provide our real world info, are happy to meet people in real life (and often do), give out accounting (which we are trying to have publicly audited), and update our members via our website and note card regularly regarding fund allocation.

Today, SL Bank arbitrages the inefficiencies of markets in virtual worlds, specifically SL’s, which arise due to the low populations and thus volumes of those markets. The fund is liquid and even if today, right now, every member of our fund wanted to withdraw, we could have the funds available in about 5 mins. Even after the withdraws, we’d still have our land and about 1 million L$ in profits. We do pay ourselves, but our pay is taken only from profits. No profit for this month, no pay.

Now I have a policy of not commenting on the projects of other people, bank or not, but I can tell you that the situation with Ginko has spilled over to our fund, and we have lost about 20% of our holdings via withdraws over the past week, since the Ginko issue came to light. The withdraw requests have, however, seemed to slow. But again, the level of liquidity and the fact we are indeed profitable (thus hold a good deal more than our members have invested) allows us to fill these withdraw requests without any trouble. Our interest rates are lower than most others, but that is what you pay for liquidity, reliability and accountability. That’s a lot of ‘ity’.

On a last note, we do not own any out of world investments. But the recent real world market swings sure have been interesting! Everything we do with our holdings and info all about us, including our address in New York City, pictures, accounting and fund allocation can be found on our website at: http://www.sl-bank.com

I hope this doesn’t sound like a shameless plug, but rather helps and answers your question. If you have any others, feel free to IM us, email us or post on Second Citizen.

Prost!
Teufel Hauptmann

That is good to know.

You seem like a reasonable and straightforward person. I like the fact immensely that you have all your deposits in-world. That is my biggest fear about Ginko, if something goes wrong and they shut their doors, 90% of the holdings are already gone...LL can't do anything about it.

May I ask what your interest rates are?

I was considering opening a bank and flipping lindens for the profits, but I found the lindex limits too constraining. Unless I can convince them to give me a lvl 4 trading limit