It's time for SL residents to take a stand

and this effects you in what way?

Yeah. I've noticed the jealousy aspect, too. It seems to revolve around one resident acquiring and controlling assets of millions and millions of Linden dollars and a bunch of other residents who seem to sit on their dead asses and complain constantly about how one resident managed to acquire and control millions and millions of Linden dollars. Or managed to acquire hundreds of sims. Or managed to sell thousands of skins. Etc., etc., etc.

Which, if you read the sentence which I replied to, is not what I said I wasn't doing.

People are being given the chance to convert one form of debt (account balances) into another form of debt (bonds). There are benefits and drawbacks to both. They don't have to buy the bonds with their account balances. They don't have to sell the bonds for cash.

that different marketplace is the market that determines the actual value of these bonds.

If you buy that bond from ginko for $100L it is the only place you can sell it because ginko is certainly not going to buy it back.
Therefore $15.03L ( the current highest buy offer for GPB) is their actual value.

If you take a look at any real life bonds (excluding junk-bonds) they are generally sold on market for more than their initial cost price.

Can please show me an example of real life bonds that lose 80% of their value as soon as you purchase them.

lol

The people dont have the Debt - you do.

they are being offered the opportunity to move one theoretical asset they cant liquidate for another Asset they can liquidate for pennies on the dollar.





Where's the f*%&%(^g money, Nick?

seconded

As the OP has no money invested in Ginko this situation affects him dearly. Someone is selling something for a price he does not approve of and, for whatever reasons, the person selling the something for the unapproved price is expected to take time out of their busy day and explain why the price is L$100 versus L$17 at a different marketplace.

One can imagine this same person scurrying between multiple grocery stores and gas stations and any number of shops and insisting that someone explain why eggs cost US$1.29 here but are US$1.28 across the street. That extra penny must obviously be funding a drug habit or an ad farm or worse... oooo0000oooo.. being retained as profit. Oh noes!

this is pathetc.

how many of you so called "for the greater good of SL" have actual assets in ginko?
is your lives, rl and sl so empty that you have to pounce on the first thing that "offends" your sense of self righteousness?

i for one hope like hell strife shuts these two threads down as they have been reduced to a flame infested witch hunt. if you are that offended by his buisness practices here's a big honkin clue: DON"T do business with him. period.

Sure i dont have any invested in ginko but i do have $L invested in HCL so this situation does affect me, as any negative publicity will reflect badly on the company in which i do have an interest in, personally i would like him do divest his stake in HCL as his mere presence anywhere near the WSE is bad for the investment community as a whole.

And actually i think i do have 0.5L invested with them.

Wow, I keep forgetting how Second Life is expected to mirror Real Life depending on the whims of the Busy Body Committee.

Hey, here's a thought... maybe we should all just let the guy who own the enterprise run it the way he sees fit. Admittedly, that's a bold concept as it means people have to stand or fall on their own. After you're done tearing Ginko down do you help rebuild them or are you only responsible for the tearing down portion? It's not like you have anything invested in them.

well crap someone call the FDA, this is obviously a crime! 1cent difference in eggs. gotta be a ponzi.

is your life so empty that you have to pounce on what offend you?

remember by joining in and posting, you are just as bad as the rest of us.

But... but.. but... that would get in the way of the all-important work of the Busy Body Committee. Before they can make Second Life better for all of us they must first destroy any resident-run business that fails to meet their strict criteria for making money within Second Life.

And after that seize the business' land.

And then erect pretty pretty waterfalls on the parcel.

See... that makes everything better.

Rocketman,

Bonds are parcelized loans from a company/institution/government to someone. To put it simply, Ginko is selling you an IOU which it promises to pay you 1% monthly on the principal you loan it in perpetuity. Unlike many kinds of bonds, it never matures, which means you may never get your money back out of it. It's basically a perpetual loan where the only liability is the monthly interest payment.

Bonds are basically underwritten by some organization which (supposedly) legitimizes them and makes them a tradeable financial instrument. That means you can take your bond and sell it to someone else, either another investor, or someone brokering (acting as a middleman) to another investor. The "market value" generally is some kind of computation based on par value, interest, duration/maturity, etc, and is part of what is underwritten. Basically, someone is initially saying, out of the gate "I'll buy those bonds at a big discount". Problem is, assuming the underwriter isn't sponsoring the buy orders directly, how many are they willing to buy at that rate initially? If you exhaust all the willing buyers before you run out of bonds to sell, the price goes down (supply > demand). If there are more people buying than are willing to sell, the price goes up (supply < demand). As such, no one (with any sense, anyway) is gonna bother spending L$100 on a bond and immediately sell it for a huge discount. They will wait until the buyers start upping the ante as more buyers show up willing to pay more for the bond.

Given that the Ginko bond issue is perpetual, the market value is never guaranteed to converge to a par value even remotely close to face value, so the only real hope for anyone buying lots of these bonds is that Ginko becomes solvent and highly profitable at some point so it will be more cost-efficient to buy the bonds back at face value, rather than continuing to pay the debt service from the interest. Potentially, that could drive the market price up, but it will probably never drive it up to a premium (ie, greater than face value), since Ginko can always buy any/all of them back at face value, as stipulated in the issue. Any premium would be due to wild speculation that Ginko will indeed be buying them back, but not in a short time frame, so that someone could garner a bit of interest from the bonds before they do. Even still, any premium would be a very small percentage over face value.

Of course, we're talking about funny money in a play-toy market here, so it could do anything. There's no rules or regulations, except those which people hold themselves to; assuming that they actually do that, which there is no hard incentive to do. It basically is the wild, wild west, and anyone seriously trying to "play" it better be careful. Further, Ginko can always default on the interest payments due to bankruptcy or other insolvency, and essentially your bonds become worth less than the electrons they are represented with. Normally, in RL, many bonds are secured such that, if the issuer (the company) goes belly-up, bond holders can claim their share of the reclaimed assets from the bankruptcy process. Some bonds are even insured by the underwriter for some percentage of face value in the case of insolvency or other financial difficulty encountered by the issuer. From what I can tell, these particular bonds are neither insured nor secured, making them truly bona fide "junk" bonds.

Anyway. Maybe someone will buy some; going to have to be a serious optimist (or in dire need of a virtual tax shelter ) to be able to justify that kind of investment.

then if that be true, may the Lord take me now. for i would rather live a life full of vilest sin that be compared to Self Righteous, Holier Than Thou, BusyBody.
but since many of you insist on applying rl rules to a virutal world, and by using your logic, any business in SL can be a Ponzi. since no one ca truly guarantee that thier product will still be around after say, a typical SL update, or a script glitch. so since so many of you "seem" to own business, and that you are holding Ginko to a higher standard than you would a rl bank, does that mean from this point on, after a bad update you will be refunding YOUR patrons lindens?

Hells yeah!

That 1-cent difference in egg prices could have funded a pretty pretty waterfall on a seized ad farm parcel for all of... hmmm... a long long long time (Yeah... I guess I could determine the actual amount of time but that would be a "fact" and that's a naughty naughty word in these parts).

All kidding aside... you're going to see the words "fraud" and "rip off" bandied about in the forums a lot and what you'll find to be most interesting is that there's never a fraud or a rip off. It's typically one resident engaged in a warning thread with "warning thread" meaning "axe to grind."

exactly. ginko was attacked like this a year ago and as far as i know they keep goin after it. and the only thing i can think of is jealousy. He saw a need, filled it, and was quite successful at it. but i guess its not enough to be good at what you do, you have to be psychi as well, and forsee a hack into your biggest investors funds, and well since he didnt consult the crystal ball on the casino thing, well lets burn him in effigy

Oh, I forgot the following disclaimer:

Nothing of what I said is meant to be investment advice. I'm a n00b at financial stuff and probably have more wrong than right in any analysis. Take whatever I have to say with a pillar of salt of a size inversely proportional to the veracity of my posts.

I'm not a lawyer, either. Thank the universe for THAT small favor.

You also forgot that the Busy Body Committee in Second Life never gets around to reading the disclaimer, the fine print, the Terms of Service, or anything else that might affect their worldview or get in the way of their uninformed opinions.

Give it about thirty-seconds and they'll all be referring to you as "that financial lawyer."

Yeah... I remember that... a certain land baroness was upset that Ginko had acquired millions in assets and attempted to start a "run on the bank." The sin committed by Ginko appears to have been not placing the money directly in the land baroness' pockets where the land baroness felt the millions and millions of Linden dollars should /rightfully/ reside. It's interesting to note that the very same land baroness was suggested as a possible "white knight" to take over Ginko.

Kind of makes you wonder about the purpose of this and other anti-Ginko-related threads, doesn't it?

hmmmmmmm doo tell doooooo tell ~_^

Okay, now close your eyes and wish really really really hard. Did you manage to wish away the RL laws and legal systems to which Linden Lab is becoming increasingly embroiled in? Hmmm... looks like they're still there.

LL's TOS is just that, its not law, its not absolute. Until and unless its tested in court, its simply - unproven. Already ONE clause has been invalidated by a court, and likely others will ultimately also. In particular, it seems to be the opinion of many WITH law degrees and membership in the bar that the gambling ban very possibly invalidates LL's argument that the $L has no value. Whether those opinions turn out to be validated by court cases remains to be seen at this point. But your smug sneering derision is rather uncalled for at this point. Remember, law trumps LL's TOS, whether your eyes are open or closed, and no matter how much you really really really wish that the TOS is the ultimate authority.

They have a disclaimer on there website, And I've banked with them for 3 years. It's like a High Risk fund if you think about it but I still inves... er, deposit with them.

Yup.