Banks inworld (Ginko, SL Bank, etc)... Currently, what are your thoughts?

Thank you Nicholas for chiming in....... I now trust Ginko even moreso.

I as well also trust Ginko more than LL (don't know if that's sayin much)

And screw you punk assclowns screwing up my thread with talks of following hitler, and accusations based on hearsay and 2nd hand info.

All I wanna know is who personally uses the banks in SL, and what are your experiences.

Nicholas, can you elaborate on the claim that there is spyware in the ATM machines? I'm guessing it's something that gives you info on your customers (I think I would have noticed if my ATM spawned a casino game)

I have used Ginko since I started playing Second Life. I trust them with my money. Nothing bad has ever happened with it, and I doubt anything ever will.

Ginko works. One time, I needed my ATM replaced and withing seconds of IMing GF Ambassador, He showed up and put the ATM in.

Also, they continue to work on things for us. There was a suggestion in the GF forums for a Desktop Account Manager thing. Hinoserm has one within a few hours.

This is like the "Seinfield" where the 'Mom and Pop store' gets closed down. The Elaine character says somthing along the lines of "Mom and Pop move in and establish trust for 48 years, just to run of with Jerry's sneakers".

If Ginko was going to shut down and run off with all your L$, it would have happened by now.

Im done.

That is an awesome idea!!

As for me, I really like Ginko and have used them almost since the beginning of their time. I thought about splitting my investments but I'm not sure about SLBank. I've heard nothing about them, good or bad, from anyone. If I lost it all though, I would be one sad chica

This thread gives you more info about their spyware: /108/08/77476/1.html
Unfortunately the image is gone, but if you read a few posts down in the thread, you'll see what it's all about.

I trusted and supported Ginko since its inception.

But first, they added a lottery to their ATM without warning. A lottery is the same as a casino game. They do this without giving the land owner a single cent back for the money they bring in to Ginko. That was the first thing that pissed me off with Ginko. Partly because I have a strict policy of not allowing any outside games on my property, I want to take full responsibility for refunds and make sure my players are happy. But also partly because they did this without any warnings, no opt-out, nothing. They just sneaked it in, I call it parasitic.

Secondly, they started spying on my visitors, how long they stayed, and via other ATMs in-world they could track where they went after being at my place. That is none of their business, frankly.

That was the drop that made me return their ATMs, withdraw my money and stop reccomending them.

Parasitic behaviour and spyware is not something I can support.
Nicholas has always been a great guy in all my talks with him, I got to know him when he was new in SL, but the business tactics Ginko employs are unacceptable to me.

Are you sure it was a Ginko ATM and just not one the LOOKED like one. We've been warned of scammers like that with Ginko lookin' ATMs.


Also, this lottery thing everyone is complaining about. No body has to participate in it.

I used to use Ginko... but I pulled everything out of it when the mass slide happened on lindex. (hell, you've no idea what's going to happen at the point, so better to have all your money on hand... when you're pretty poor, anyway )

Now that it's all stablising, it's getting to the time to start saving again.


As for the use of Ginko when I used it... the interest was good... the speed the withdrawals were processed was good... nothing really went wrong with them for me.

Bottom line, I trust them while the economy is stable... but then, I'm poor, so I can't afford to lose any money.

Why does anyone in SL need a damn BANK? There's Lindex, and there's our account Lindens. We don't NEED banks. How useless can you get? You going to issue checking accounts? How about CDs and retirement packages?

Thats is exactly what feeds the drops in the first place.
Everyone in fear and pulling out money.

If I put money into SL as a stock I would probably place a set amount of USD each week. Say something like $20 a week.
I would spend no more or less no matter what is going on.
So when the value of L$ is high the $20 naturally buys less of it. When it's low then $20 buys a lot more. Sort of self regulating that way.

Thank you for the continued postings of experiences.

I can understand how some may be upset about sneaking in a lottery.
i can understand how some may be upset that the ATMs track infos.

Personally I don't mind either of these things..... I do however feel that the banks in SL NEED to do absolutely everything they can to keep the trust at 100%... and by having the tracking info and not publicly mentioning it, I could see how it would turn people off.
-------------
Also, excellent reference to Seinfeld
-------------
The reason people want to keep money in banks is the interest. I'd rather make money doing nothing, than not make money and do nothing. Also, adding money to a bank in SL continues the growth and support of that bank.
-------------
The one thing I fear though is the "shit hits the fan day"..... I understand there is risk involved because the banks use money to gain money, that is fine with me...... however, there is nothing binding that says the owners of the bank won't just split at any time. There's millions of L$s in these banks, and even a trustworthy company could still just split. It would be nice to have in writing from the banks that the investment risks are the only way to lose money, and not because the owner simply decides to quit SL.

Ahem... it wasn't a week, it was several months, and it wasn't a disgruntled ex-employee, it was me. And if I remember correctly, I had told a bunch of people, and no, I never intented to publically announce it, simply because... well, it's too much work to announce stuff. If I make something cool, I'll put it on the GF website or forum to show it off. We don't even do newsletters anymore because of the sheer amount of time it takes to send 7000+ notecards/emails.

If you want to know what's going on with Ginko Financial, read our website, I won't post about it here, and I certainly won't stand on top of people's cubeular houses and shout it into the crowd. That'd be silly.




Talking to my support staff, this was one of those cases where SL lost the transaction somewhere between the transfer from him and us, which used to happen alot way back in the day. He was told to contact Linden Lab, and he never responded to us further about the problem. If Linden Lab wasn't able to resolve the issue, please have him let me know personally.


-Hinoserm

Oh, and about the "spyware". It was an experiment by Hino to see if he could create a map by having the atm scan in 96m radius. Once the scan is complete, the atm sends the data {the data being just the location of where someone might be, like the green dots on the SL map}, and have it update on a map that he had made on a web page. The scan would go off once every 500 seconds I believe, which meant it used little to no sim resources to engage. The map would then compile all the data, and twice a day would update with all the information it gathered. On the map you could see what were the busiest areas {indicated by lots of dots, each one a person that was scanned once and then having all the data gathered in a 12 hour period laid on top of each other, if that makes any sense to you} and such. Of course by looking at the map we compiled, you couldn't tell who the person was on the map, or even where that dot was exactly, such as knowing if that person was in a certain store. Just the sims name. You could basically get more information if you looked at the world map built into SL, but what Hino made was just a neat little script with no malice or alternative intent.

If you look through Hino's previous post where he replied to the topic "Ginko part II", he explains it better and even posted the script that he used. That was the famous Ginko "spyware".

My,My,My,
SL Banks run unsecured by other Players,,,,,
If anyone is Foolish enough to Fall for an Obvious Scam like that, they Richly deserve to Lose every Dime.

Angel.

the fishyest part of ginko to me is the total lack of transparency, hell you give them your money in a world as monetary regulated as the far west and they don't tell you anything precise on what and how they pay your investments

ponzi ponziii ^_^

I know... and it's not something I'd do now.

But you tend to be very cautious when your total usable money supply is in the very low thousands... (I said I was poor, didn't I? )

lol yeah

Well they dont have too....

pie pie (. ) ( .)

The two major factors to me are trust and transparency. These are the main problems with all player run banks currently in SL.

1)What guarantees do I have that the bank just won't keep my deposit?
2)How can I be sure to get the stated interest on my deposit if I don't know how the bank invests?

#1)In SL, this is traditionally handled by the "trust me" model in addition to "reputation". In fact, this thread is a sounding board for bank reputation.

#2)Is just not addressed. In fact most of us suspect that the banks withdraw to RL and invest in short term instruments like T-Bills and money markets. The high rate of return reflects a bet on "shorting" the $L. With the $L strengthening, interest rates will likely drop. But we're guessing, we have no idea. The finances are hidden. Maybe the money is given to grandma to spend (invest) on Bingo.

These are serious problems, for example:
1)Why would a bank loan anyone $L?
-Even when holding land as collateral because how can you be sure the bank will return the land when the transaction is successfully completed?

2)Why would I deposit $L into a bank (even one with a good reputation) when there is nothing stopping them from taking the money and running.

So banking in SL is much riskier than in RL, and the interest rate (investment rate on return) is higher to reflect that. It's classic risk vs. reward.

How do you make SL banking safer? This is what we're doing in Neufreistadt:

a)Set up an independent judiciary with binding enforcement powers (using escrowed $L and land).
b)Make all agreements (including payment receipts) signed and notarized agreements using Nota Bene.
c)Full financial transparency of all businesses and gov't via public reports. An emphasis on keeping assets in world.
d)A legal roadmap to licensed banking.

Now the bank can't violate an agreement without paying severe penalties. One criticism is instead of trusting one person, I'm trusting 5 instead. Yes, you are trusting a legal system of 5 objective people and a body of law instead of a single self-interested party. It's not perfect, but it's better than what we have and it's basically a small/simplified version of the RL structure.

I looked at a bank about a month ago, not sure what bank, and what glared at me as a major warning sign was the interest rate. It was something ridiculously high like 1% a day or 1% a week. Current RL banks are playing something on the order of 0.08%/week.

That to me is a sure fire warning that this was not a bank, but instead a pyramid scheme. Why? Because an honest bank is going to borrow money (and that what they do when you make a deposit) at the best rates possible. Why should they pay SL avatars such high rates if they could just as easily borrow the money in RL at much lower rates? And if the bank is honest, it would have to lend the money even at higher rates. Again, who's going to borrow from the bank at those rates when they can get much lower rates in RL?

The only time any institution or business can promise those types of rates is when they are engaged in a pyramid scheme.

TANSTAAFL

They can be trusted as far as any bank. When's the last time the us reserve bank was ever audited? NEVER.

RL banks don't take L$.

Heather, can you follow up on this? RL banks don't take L$ but L$ have an equivalent US$ value. It's no different than banks in two different countries, money flows to the best value until things are balanced.

But the question still remains, how can SL banks pay those interest rates unless it is a pyramid scheme?

If these banks were really on the up and up, we should be taking every cent we have and every cent we can borrow in RL and investing it in the SL banks.

The LL ToS states that $L is legally worthless. This enables LL to sidestep some of the financial regulation. Is it truly worthless given RMT (real money transfer) ability to exchange into USD? I think yes until a court rules otherwise (which could happen).

So, if it's on the "up and up" let's take all our RL USD and invest? I'd say no, for the following reasons:

1)There is no insurance, e.g. FDIC insuring accounts up to $60,000. Neufreistatdt will offer this.
2)There are no banking regulations dictating a rate of reserve the bank must hold. Given the risk of SL, it should be higher than the 2-8% usually mandated by international bank agreements.
3)The bank revenue sources have not been disclosed. The way a bank should work is to earn funds by giving out loans and mortgages and collecting interest.
4)If LL should close, all investments are lost.
5)There is no legal recourse or binding contracts for the customer. Neufreistadt has solved this as well.

So without knowledge of #3, it's hard to justify anything but a speculative investment.

Well, shouldn't SL banks be able to give out 300x or more interest {depending on how much L per dollar it currently is} by that logic?

I use SL Bank quite often. The guy that runs it is smart as all hell. They pay a great interest rate and have always been really friendly to me, which after reading this thread, doesn't seem to be the theme at Ginko.

Yea, I've been using SL Bank for a few days now. Their Rewards system is nice. Good to know you get paid more depending on how much you risk. Interest rates are higher than anyone else's and their ATM looks cooler than any I have seen. A nice change from the big ugly tin can ATMs I see all over the place. I've seen some posts on the Econ Board from the owner and he defiantly seem to know his sh*t. I think he's an Economist at NYU or something.

I also noticed that Ginko's interest rates just spiked up form .11 to .13 almost overnight. Maybe they are feeling the heat from SL Bank?

I'd think that if you were going to invest a large amount in an in game bank, the best thing to do would be to put a bit in each bank to reduce risk. I'd also think that now that Ginko has some competition that people will start to diversify and pull money from Ginko and put it into SL Bank. That combined with competition which seems to be driving up interest rates, should make it be known if Ginko is a Ponzi scheme or not. I mean hell, if a bunch of money gets moved out of their bank and at the same time they are paying a higher interest rate, if they are a ponzi scheme, they won't be lasting that long, or at least no where near as long as before. Most ponzi schemes go down after the money going in = less than money going out. After that, what's the point? Those that say "Ginko has been around a long time, so I trust them" are forgetting that if Ginko is a ponzi then the longer it is there the more likely it will get shut down soon, not the other way around. If Ginko keeps raising and raising interest rates (thus being desperate to avoid withdraws) I'd be more suspicious of them as being a ponzi scheme rather than an actual business trying to make a profit. Competition is GOOD for all of us. Guess we'll see.