SL Banks are Toast - Yee Haw!

Will the WSE REopen for people to take money out before the block?


I need to retrieve my 3 dollars.

It's a good thing that the existing banks are being removed, but I'm a bit worried about the consequences with regard to in-world business investment. Venture capital is important to many real businesses and it will probably become the same in SL if SL's tendancy towards the real economy continues, but there's no chance of a company being able to obtain an RL institutional banking license for a currency that isn't "real".

Hmm... Onrez offers a wallet via some of their vendors. I have one for that, so I don't have to go to their ATM's any more.

Come to think of it, the only ATM's I've used were SLEx's and that was because for a while there, I was having trouble getting withdraws otherwise.

My suggestion is call them Store Credit Stations or SCS for short.

I guess this means i'll have to go see Mario out back in the ally to cover my loses at the floating slingo game now.

sounds good to me.

I know it will not go down well with many on these forums, but there is another view. I've been a depositer with JT Financial for many months, I think, since shortly after it opened.

I've never had a moments doubt about it. I've always had my interest paid on time. I've always been able to get my money out when I wanted it. It paid me a nice little Linden bonus on top of the weekly stipend.

Did I know it was uninsured and unregulated? Of course I did.

Could I stand to lose the 100K+ that I've had in there for a while? Of course I could (in real terms its about £250 - I charge rather more than that for a days work).

Did I lose a moments sleep over it? Of course I didn't.

Do I know that there are people who couldn't afford to lose _any_ money? Yes of course I do. Those people shouldn't put money into things that have risks, like the lottery or bingo games or slot machines - but they do. In RL I don't even buy a lottery ticket, and I've never bet on a horse in my life.

Linden Lab has made a decision. I think its very unlikely that the decision will be reversed and while I don't really agree with it I will live with it.

I do realise that their announcement may well cause a 'run' on the banks involved and will undoubtedly cause short term problems for many of them. Just as their ridiculous ban on gambling did in the recent past.

Projects that really need that much venture capital can do so off-world in US dollars.

Which is the only way I'd ever have done it when talking thousands of USD!

Especially when LL calls all Linden Transfers "gifts"

this is funny, WSE is a bank AND offers financial services...

There is a first time for everything. A kudo to the Providers on this one.

I think this is significant. LL is forced to step in to limit some severely abused freedoms when they get enough complaints. Any time you get the "Is your SL getting better or worse" survey, tell them "worse" and say what you think about ad farm extortionists.

This is a very good point that you make. I didn't see that but this move makes $L a real currency. And you are right about the link between $L and RL money being an important event horizon that will have to be resolved eventually. But I don't agree that the link will be severed. I think that SL will just be another country on the world map with its own currancy.

Glad to see LL taking an intrest in the SL world again. Good call, imo.

For those on the blog, and here, speaking of censorship...I'd bet 10L$ (if gamblign was allowed lol) that these are the people running the banks. Either that or those that don't use thier heads for much other than holding hats.

~Jessy

I'll agree! A big hug for all the Lindens involved in this decision.

that`s pushing it...

maybe when the grid is stable again...

The WSE and other 'stock markets' can presumably continue to operate as 'stock markets' Basically all they do is offer an opportunity for people to buy into other companies, and unless they are offering interest on their deposits they have no other function.

30 days down time to upgrade their service though, is ridiculous and unacceptable. The last time they suspended service for an upgrade also dragged on for, I think 2 weeks, which was also quite unbelievable and bound to lead to rumours and speculation.

It won't be the end of Sl.

....It will be the "end" if they DON'T do it. It'll be LL forced to file papers and register with all the govs and regulatory agencies in the world, if they don't.

There is no reason we have to pay for something with Lindens. Already many people except real money only--through pay pal, or external websites. etc.

Lindens$ need to stay inworld only--no exchange. Sellers and buyer can decide if they are playing with lindens or real money depending on what they are doing.

The benefit to all this would be we can once again return to "Fictional" things when we want. The only reason this Bank or gambling thing happened is because it involves Lindens that can be exchanged for real money.

Thats where the censorship was happening. Outlawing gambling and banks that are fictional would be unnecessary.

I guess I am misunderstanding. If I can't cover my tier somehow with real income, I am selling my sim and going back to a basic account. So if you are saying there would still be a way to extract real money from SL, then I guess it would not be the end.

I hope you don't lose your money.

However, even if you think the system was sustainable at present...

Surely you can see long term, as Second Life grew - it never could have been.


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Linden Labs wants to grow bigger.

We lost all hopes for a niche little enclosed virtual world when they decided to allow open registration.

Really soon as they made that decision-- Ginko and all its imitators were eventually doomed, because although they could scale just fine - eventually the scale would have attracted the RL authorities.

Ginko just collapsed first. Long term a successor wouldn't have.

Rebecca has often stated her belief that Linden Dollars should be like WoW gold coins (or whatever they are called). And not be officially allowed to be converted.

So her bringing this up now is no real surprise.

I think its a Moot point.

I think the Lindens would get rid of the Linden$ before they close the Linden Ex.

One might suggest the WSE 30 day closure was due to a bit of "insider trading"

Great news. I hope everyone who has money in banks right now are able to withdraw.

Does seem like very odd timing. Like the time Nick won the lottery right before Ginko failed.

And I already know it is inevitable. LL is not a Security, a bank, a issuer of currency or anything of the kind and when all that comes to a head they will be required to be all of those things.

To businesses in SL, having to make that extra conversion step from Lindens to Real Money is a unnecesary (and slower) pain anyway.

Since the day I first owned estate land I was paying with real cash (pay pal). No Lindens were ever involved. My own business only excepts real money as well.

No reason in the universe a person can't pay with real money immediately.


Feel free to disagree, but it will happen or SL will be faced with serious issues, far worse then angry residents and technology problems.

Great move by LL, but it's going to get very messy before it gets better.

I'll give you a very good reason. Because no external method of payment is geared to making micro-payments that in many cases are just a few pennies per transaction. The fees for processing individual in-world payments would be several orders of magnitude higher than the value of the clothing or other typical items purchased.

L$50 t-shirt = 17 cents US, plus a minimum fee from PayPal of $1.00 to process it? Your L$ 50 t-shirt now cost you over L$330, after handling the processng fees.. And the business owner LOSES 83 cents on the sale, when he tries to get the money back out?

Paying in real world dollars is all well and good for a tier payment that d over $40 USD in the first place, or for paying someone to terraform a whole sim. But it's stupid to do it for the small stuff. And if the merchants who sell the small stuff can't cash out their profits, why should they make stuff?