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SecondLife Bans Unregistered In-World Banks
GuruBuckaroo writes "Virtual Ponzi schemes — pardon, "Banks" — have finally been given the boot by the policymakers at Linden Lab's Second Life. According to the company's latest blog post: 'As of January 22, 2008, it will be prohibited to offer interest or any direct return on an investment (whether in L$ or other currency) from any object, such as an ATM, located in Second Life, without proof of an applicable government registration statement or financial institution charter. We're implementing this policy after reviewing Resident complaints, banking activities, and the law, and we're doing it to protect our Residents and the integrity of our economy.'"
LL should have had exclusive control over their currency and the exchange thereof to begin with. Allowing other parties to do this for them was an open invitation for them and their users to get shafted.
Morons.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
The thing that I have trouble conceiving of is how people could trust these virtual banks/investment schemes in the first place, especially since there's real money involved. I find Second Life interesting, but like the internet, it's still a bit of the wild west. I barely trust my real world bank to do the right thing with my money, to say nothing of trusting some virtual bank.
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
Of course what really just happened is that they have triggered a massive run on the banks now. Is it better to wait for all the different banks to fail or ban them causing everyone to withdraw their money at once? You are giong to see every bank going the way of Ginko in the very near future now. (even that tiny minority that wasnt offering ponzi scheme style interest rates)
I have never, EVER, met a person who 'plays' this game, I am probably the only one in my circle who has even heard of it, and I only hear about it here on slashdot.
My sentiments exactly. And I work with hundreds of nerds/engineers/etc.
All of the people I know seem to have first lives.
First, a minor point, banks don't issue money (they used to but that creates undesireable barriers to trade) and thus making banks adhere to the gold standard is meaningless. Governments make currency standards.
Second, gold doesn't have intrinsic value at all. The value of gold fluctuates all the time. All the gold standard did was fix the price of gold. While the gold standard was tenable for a time it didn't work in the long run because it's not stable. Your money supply is dependent on your gold supply which in turn limits your economy. You can't have more dollars than your fixed ratio to gold. New discoveries of gold can also create deflationary shocks.
There's nothing special about money at all. It's a medium of exchange. It has what value we agree it has, no matter if the medium is a piece of paper or a string of bits or a hunk of metal.
That's more like a law of government than like a law of nature.
We're seeing the exact process by which people create governments to protect our rights. Since SL already had what was equivalent to tribal and voluntary governments, we are seeing something much like the process SL'ers learned about in history.
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make install -not war
It's even worse than the Old West. Back then, you could shoot a swindler and he'd stay dead.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
The only intrinsic value it has is it's perceived rarity and the fact that you can't just pull it out of thin air. There is no way anyone can go back to the gold standard with the WTO in existence, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to find a way to make the currency system actually work.
The way it's set up now every country in the world is gunning for bankruptcy in the end. You can't sustain a system of constant debt growth forever. We need to find something to base money on that isn't a commodity controlled by the few and also isn't debt. Or we can just continue to fight wars and reforming nations and start over every time the debt ceiling is too high.
In regards to the article, I find it hilarious that you can't even run a virtual bank without a real life charter. That just slays me. I think the line between virtual and real just blurred beyond recognition.
You're nothing; like me.
XenoPhage
Technological Musings