Ginko Financial DOSL (Dead on Second Life) as of August 8th at 7:30 pm sl time. Lots of coverage online.

Jitters in Second Life as bank shuts doors The biggest bank in the virtual world of Second Life has closed its doors after a run on its deposits, putting at risk hundred of thousands of real dollars of savings and investments.

On Thursday, Ginko Financial - which is owned by Brazilian from Sao Paulo whose real name is Andre Sanchez - stopped accepting deposits, froze all withdrawals and converted account holders’ balances into “tradeable debt securities” called Ginko Perpetual Bonds.

Unable to pay depositors, Ginko ceases banking operations “Customers will receive one bond with a face value of L$1 for every L$1 they have deposited in Ginko Financial,” said Chief Executive Nicholas Portocarrero (real life: Andre Sanchez of San Paolo, Brazil) in a statement. “Each Ginko Perpetual Bond will yield L$0.03 or 3% of face value per quarter.”

The security was trading at about a quarter of its face value at 7:20 am Pacific on Thursday. When the bank ceased operations, it had about L$50,000,000 queued up for withdrawal.

Ginko Financial finally dead Nicholas Porocarrero finishes the letter with the comment:
“Ginko Financial will bounce back from this and if you stick with us, you wll not lose anything. If you must sell the bonds, then you must sell, but I advise against accepting low prices.”

Whilst I continue to maintain you should make your own choices about what you do with your own money, I’ve been fairly forthright in my attitude towards stock exchanges, so whilst I continue to wish Nicholas all the best, I, for one, will be selling, and if it hurts my pocket, well so be it.

Serious Questions: WSE and Ginko Financial Before the Ginko Financial uproar which has taken the spotlight - even with it closed - I was focusing on the World Stock Exchange (WSE) and some of the problems related to it. Oddly enough, the involuntary transfer of Ginko’s clients assets into Ginko Perpetual Bonds has gotten me right back where I started. Further, after I pulled investment from WSE - Ginko, which is linked to the WSE through Hope Capital, tossed me right back. Well, here I am - about $183,300L of me. And I’m small potatoes - some of the numbers I’ve had people confide in me are certainly worth a few calls to a lawyer.

Making Second Life More Viable for Investment As I wrote before, the community needs to take steps forward. These steps, as I wrote, include these demands:

• We want better investment or we will not invest.

• We want more transparency or we will not invest.
• We want more realistic expectations on our investments
• We want better policy from Linden Lab when it comes to these things.

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