Bad News from the Virtual City. Second Life Northern Rock lookalike Ginko Financial has gone belly-up, blowing a $2m black hole in the Virtual Economy. It was unregulated, and paid 60% interest on its assets over its three year existence. It’s now got plenty of nuttin.’ Like it always had.Following the ban on gambling in Second Life we began experiencing a wave of withdrawals from Ginko Financial. This led the funds we keep in reserve for day to day use to be exhausted, which evolved into a full blown panic depleting even our last line of cash reserves and resulting in the current situation, with about L$50,000,000 queued up for withdrawal. This situation is unsustainable, as we would be forced to sell off our assets at a significant discount in order to honor such withdrawals, thus severely harming Ginko Financial's long term prospects and it's ability to ultimately honor all of it's obligations to accountholders.
Of course in real life going bust does rather more than harm your long term prospects. “If it looks too good to be true it probably is” warns Linden Labs. Where virtual and actual circles overlap, $2m of Linden dollars = $750K real spondulicks. Reader beware. Some punters have lost $10,000 only too real dollars riding this particular porcelain horse. Freedom from reality has its limits.But the Power of Dreams cannot be destroyed. What better to follow a hare-brained fantasy crash than a hare-brained fantasy rescue package?
After considerable thought, we have concluded that the only way forward from this is to convert, compulsorily, all customer deposits into a tradeable debt security called Ginko Perpetual Bonds. These bonds, listed on the World Stock Exchange (www.wselive.com), will allow Ginko Financial to recover from recent events by removing all pressure from our cash reserves while providing accountholders with a way to cash out on an open market.
Hacked off 3-d virtual investors, just like real world traders, now have two real alternatives — either move on to Third Life, or turn the bloody computer off and go back to real life. Thus Art mirrors life, as the world’s stock markets and debts hubble bubble, toil and trouble, Brown bails out the Northern Crock, and Bush begs oil off the Saudis. Anyone for Biblical Economics? Seriously?
