Yeah, come to the rescue of Ginko so we can have more stories like this:

Am I supposed to know what people are using their money for?



Do you support me freezing all accounts until their owners fax me their ID documents?



Why would I want to get it back?



You know what -is- common sense? Thinking before writing something.

WTF are you talking about?

I wasn't referring to you. I was referring to the fact that people are handing over money and are showing absolutely NO common sense because:

a) they have absolutely NO clue of who they're giving money to
b) have absolutely NO way of verifying how the recipient is using their money
c) have absoluetely no way of getting their money back if they're being scammed

Talk about common sense!

Well, I can tell you, absolutely no one here is showing any common sense at all.

Blaze, man, as you no doubt already know I agree with you on this one, but I think its time to let it go. It seems unlikely that anyone who reads the forums at this point would be unaware of the suspected nature of Ginko, and these posts have become nothing but troll bait. Besides, I don't know about you, but all the hyper defensive posts from Ginko conspirato... I mean... "investors," have me feeling like they've been warned and if (when) they lose their money its going to be tough for me to feel sorry for them.

We've said our piece, they can heed the warnings or march forward, blinders equipped, either way I think the point has been made.

I think in the end when this blows up the forum moderators will be to blame for locking these threads.

Which will, of course, be another excuse for you to bitch and moan about how poorly LL deals with stuff.

I guess I'll leave the subject alone after this, but I have to offer a parting thought:

If someone makes it their mission to drive another party out of business and succeeds in doing so, the investors of the defunct company will obviously suffer unrecoverable losses.... So, who would be most to blame for those losses? The investors? The defunct company? Or the party with the mission?

Good night, all.

The interesting bit is that you cannot be AR'ed for driving a person out of business...

And blaze, why is it important to have "common sense" to either enjoy SL or participate in the forums?

"Common sense" would also dictate that it is much more profitable to spend your time doing productive things in RL instead of connecting to virtual worlds and enjoy anarchy... but that's what 85,000 people prefer to do, apparently.

For myself, I'm still waiting for the first unhappy customer of Ginko that shows up telling everybody how they were scammed. So far, there seem to be no unhappy customers, and the thread has been going for quite a while.

Also, it looks you may have missed Nicholas' explanations. Beside Ginko Financials, he's also running other businesses through GinkoTec (namely, but not limited to, rentals!). Shouldn't these provide Ginko with yet another L$ income source? By having Ginko Financials investing in GinkoTec — backed on capital — and if GinkoTec is managed as well as Ginko Financials (ie. no unhappy customers), shouldn't we assume that, Ponzi scheme or not, Ginko is still able to keep all their customers happy?

For all we know, any person renting right now may, from one day to the other, see their investment disappear if the landowner disappears without appointing a "successor". While I can gladly admit that owning land is "safer" (you just have to trust that LL is around), there is a high risk of losing all your business if it's based on rented land. How can you "trust" your landlord?

In a strange way, having Ginko with their assets off-world is an added security. Even if tomorrow LL shuts down the grid and goes surfing... Nicholas would still be able to repay his customers in US$ (let's say, at least partially). It's an interesting thought, but that is similar to multinationals that invest in rough, unstable countries: if there is war or revolution, at least part of their assets is "safe" on a "trusted" bank.

So, why is it "common sense" to trust in things like rentals or in-world systems without a off-world counterpart, and it "goes against common sense" trusting a mixed approach like Ginko does?

Is it just because it resembles a Ponzi scheme? (some day, this will be labeled as a corolary of Godwin's Law) Or are other, more subtle reasons behind it? (competition and envy both come to mind)

Pretty fair summary, Kazuo. I too think that forum readers are now adequately warned.

It is my intention to reduce my posting on the topic unless new information becomes available, or unless I see a particularly erroneous post that needs correcting. Like the whole thread entitled "Ginko Financial doing exactly what they said they'd do". Showing as it does that the poster still has not grasped the basis of a Ponzi scheme, that they could even imagine such a statement to be relevant. It seems that ignorance still abounds, and is no deterrent to starting your own thread on the topic, to spread it around.

My biggest concern now is the investors who never read the forums, who may have heard nothing of our warnings. And the fact that some SL residents are so negligent with their trust that they may quite possibly be underwriting RL crime and even murder with their own funds. They simply don't seem to care to investigate. Bizarre. Can it just be the effect of greed, or is it the excitement of playing with fire in a relatively contained safe environment (for them)?

I'm really worried that many posters seem to be partly blinded by antipathy toward Anshe. Whereas in my mind people's exposure to Anshe, whilst concerning, pales into insignificance beside Ginko.

It's all a beautiful demonstration of why Ponzi schemes are illegal in RL, rather than letting people make up their own minds. Governments have seen this Lemming-like rush to the edge before.

With respect, this is not true. Forseti flirts with the old, old, misunderstanding. Selling L$ on the exchange has no effect whatever on the L$ supply inside SL. How many times does this have to be said?

It is true that an increase in L$ sales will drop the US$value of the L$ on the exchange, and so reduce the RL value of the unchanged internal L$ money supply.

But the point with regard to Ginko, and the economic effect of its cashout is largely being missed. We need to compare the two situations. With Ginko, and without Ginko.

To what extent did the existence of Ginko INCREASE the sales of L$? What would have happened to those same L$ if Ginko had not existed? My guess is that perhaps 60% would have been sold on the exchanges anyway. Could easily be more. Traders about to cash out invested instead.

If I am right, then this proportion didn't affect SL, or the rest of us, at all. It's a private matter between Ginko and its investors. In effect an RL investment, bypassing all law, controls, and scrutiny. Though subject to the exchange rate on eventual return, adding a big imponderable.

The other 40% of what was sold by Ginko on the exchange, I guess, is partly money that would have lain dormant in accounts, and partly money that would have bought things in world.

This would not have been cashed-out by now, and its sale has therefore acted to depress the L$ value a little. With L$ trades running at L$3m per day, this L$7m odd extra sales over some months will likely have had little effect.

I think LL look at it this way, and conclude that at the present levels Ginko is too small to do much serious economic damage to SL in general, however it behaves.

It will be the investors who suffer if it goes wrong. A valuable learning experience, LL might think.

Unless RL law officers and regulators step in, then heaven help us. Its inevitable in the end, but please not yet until we are stronger, and other people have paid for the test cases.

Elle, you didn't read very carefully. Of course the money supply internally remains the same. This had already been explained earlier in the thread and I didn't feel a need to repeat it. I said that some RL value in the form of demand was removed, not the amount of currency.

I agree that this sub-20 million amount isn't a dangerous amount for an economy with billions of L$ in the current float, and I agree that a certain amount of this currency would have been sold anyway... the exact proportion anyone's guess.

The stipend argument anshe made doesn't really hold water for me because there's a lot of factors here, but the concept of someone continually pulling US$ value out and never repatriating any of that value (or even providing intangible value to the economy) does bother me some.

As I said in another post, the biggest impact a fraud situation (I'm not just talking about ginko here) would have on second life isn't probably directly economic but psychological... but modern economists are starting to acknowledge the impact of the psychological and the irrational.

We're probably of similar mindset here. Like you I'm done writing on this topic for now. What can be said has been said.

I agree. Psychological. But maybe we need such a collapse to teach many of us a little wisdom. The other big danger is that of sucking in the RL regulatory authorities. Possible Ponzi schemes over the internet are taken seriously, thoroughly investigated and if proven prosecuted with all possible vigor. Thats all it would be to a prosecutor. The whole "virtual world" subtlety would go by the board. What we have here, to them, is just another possible US$70,000 (and growing) ponzi scheme on the internet. With possible money laundering and (not quite inconceivable) terrorist overtones.

And if once the authorities get interested, where will all LL's "anarchic experiment" plans end ? Only anarchy-preserving solution would be to move LL lock stock and barrel to Russia (or where ?).

SL needs to survive , avoiding regulation, until it disperses cross-jurisdiction as the metaverse, and thus obtains some slight immunity. Its a bit too soon. In the interim we don't need greedy little scams (greed at both ends) pulling us into the gaze of the authorities prematurely. If Ginko isn't one, then with the present level of investment negligence, a real scam will soon arrive.

damn good post elle

A metaverse gets really complicated, as does the Internet already, when countries try to overlay national regulation on an intrinsically supra-national creation. It's gonna be an interesting ride.

I too would like to avoid RL regulation for a long as possible. While some bad things may happen, this does create a more free-wheeling culture of "try anything" entreneurship. However, I fully expect the SEC to start looking at virtual securities, and the potential for money laundering and fraud are such that the DOJ will definitely start paying attention if they aren't already (they probably are on a small scale).

As long as they don't wade in with a heavy hand, it should be business as usual in SL don't you think?

The alternative to RL regulation is industry activism. We need to become self policing and we need to educate one another.

By locking down all these threads, forum moderators are blocking both the activism and the policing.

Basically, what we end up with here, is

- no LL regulation
- no community regulation

This world becomes a juicy target for schemes which rely on information about scams being strongly curtailed.

I can only say, if and when this blows up - it'll be the forum moderators to blame for locking down the conversation and putting a stop to the community.

Oh, yeah, and forseti / elle / whoever else.. before you go on and challenge my tone and my wording, all I can say is I don't see you guys starting any threads.

It's so easy to sit on the sidelines and snipe at us, but how about getting into the fray rather than just riding our threads?

when did i snipe at your tone blaze?

i said other people weren't listening, but i never said anything about your posts. I know i "bug" you somehow, but I don't get this particular comment.

WHAT ?
You see me as not contributing adequately ?

As for sniping at you, I made one remark that might have been so interpreted. To do with trying to achieve empathy with a poster by temporarily standing beside them. You're a bit strident, Blaze. But I think on this your heart is basically in the right place. *hug*

(thinks - perhaps I should go through her posts more carefully before saying that)

No time, no time.......
I think I need a quote from Alice in Wonderland. Was it the White Rabbit ?

Sorry, I'm still reeling from a warning I got from the forum moderators, and perhaps I'm taking it out on you guys.

I just don't understand their game plan here.