GUEST POST from Arbitrage Wise about JT Financials

Most people already know who JT Financials is. And I think most people want to know how we can possibly provide the interest rate we do. Well, believe it or not, we do some sophisticated RL arbitrage trading that CAN provide us the interest. But, let's assume we didn't and just take a look at things from an in-world perspective.

SL is growing exponentially right now. It may not seem like it, but we are barely the seeds to the beginning of virtual worlds. I can't remember what article it was, or the exact numbers, but I believe some article said that by 2011, 80% of the population will be in virtual world. If you believe that, and you feel that SL may be the main platform (as I do), then you have to think that with JT Financial having a strong position in the financial sector of SL, that we will benefit the most as we grow with SL. We operate one of the biggest banks in SL and have one of the best managed stock exchanges in SL. That alone should have some merit for growth and a potential buyout by a RL company.

But let's take a look into some of the other things we are doing. First, based on our interest rate of 44% annually, and our total deposits of 70M, we are paying about 2.5M a month in interest. If you look on our ATM, you will see that we have turned our ATMs in to ads - the first grid wide advertising network. And we are going to cater to Real Life corporations who can afford to have ads on there. In short, our goal is for those ads to bring in about 2M a month, and as our ATM network grow, along with our customer base, so will the revenue from the ATM ads. Let's assume we only pull in 1M a month, that leaves us with about 1.5M of interest we have to cover. We'll leave out profits from the stock exchange (www.slcapex.com) for now since profits will have to go to paying off the purchase debt, which I think should be paid off in about 6 months. If we can achieve that, we've basically bought a stock exchange for 1M from the upfront cash we paid out, is that not a sweet deal?

Now, let's look at my profile and the businesses we're trying to start up or have. These businesses will end up helping one another grow because there is some synergy in them.

-SLReports.net: already generating revenue from ads. Let's assume we can make 200K from this business a month.

-Wisemetaverse.com: this is our advertising engine that is located on all of our ATM. The system is a very sophisticated system that allows you to control textures and what item the textures give, as well as keep track of clicks. We are still trying to make this system commercially ready. Let's assume we can get 500 users to pay us 2000L a month to use this system, that's 1M in revenue

-www.slmarketlive.com: This is our retail site. It is currently up and only sells virtual items, but we're going to rebuild it so that we can sell Virtual and Real Life versions, or Sell Virtual Versions while advertising RL versions. Let's low-ball it and say we only make 100K a month (by the end of the year), even though a site selling Real Life items should make more.

-www.helpture.com: If you are a small e-commerce business and sell RL items, but need virtual versions of it built, you need a solution to find builders. Helpture will be a site allowing you to post images of your items so that others can bid to build it. The site is up, but not ready. This one can be a goldmine if you have hundreds of thousands of people needing virtual versions of their personal items built, or thousands of home-based eBay businesses needed virtual items built. Shall we peg potential profits at 1M a month?

There you have it, all of our current businesses that are in operations, or should be by the end of the year. If we add up the guestimates we just made on revenue, that's about 2.3M. We only had to cover an additional 1.5M.

Now think about this. This idea is still just a thought, but the wheels have been set in motion. We have reserved the domain www.slwallet.com. As SL gets bigger, and more retail sites get into it, they will want to accept L$ as a form of payment. By then, we'll have a VERY large customer base from JT Financials. Think BIG, as in SLWallet can be for SL what Paypal was for eBay. Instead of "We Accept Paypal", it'll be "We Accept Lindens". Someone has to provide the payment gateway, why not us? We're heading towards that direction.

So, do you see all of the dots starting to connect now? And after reading this long essay about our in-world business, you probably forgot that I've mentioned in the beginning we do RL investments that can pay back the interest alone. So if EVERYTHING I've just written about completely flops, we'll still be OK. That's putting your money to work right there.

Finally, we're also going to be donating 5000L to Johnlight strictly for trading on www.slcapex.com, as a separate portfolio to help his cause and see how he does. We have set some term limitations with him, but he'll probably provide you more details in his own blog.

Very good new from SL capital exchange / JT Financials

After my visit by JT financials yesterday, I had a chat with their CEO, Arbitrage Wise. First, it's good to have a bank where you can talk to some top managers. Even in my RL bank, this is not possible. Second, he accepted to write a guest post for the blog, saying more about the bank, and possibly answering my old question about SL banks: where do the interests money come from !

I received his post today, and as you will see it's quite detailed, and a bit longer than what I usually post, but I'm sure you'll enjoy it. And as you will see, this could give kind of a new start to my quest for 1'000'000 L$ !

SL Capital Exchange - 50 L$ for free

In my tour of banks, I visited today SL Capital Exchanges (www.slcapex.com), which offers savings account (0.12% daily) but also operates a virtual stock exchange.

There was a big difference going there compared to other banks, as I could meet some avatars employed by the bank to inform and help customers ! So I could chat for a while with on of them, and I opened an account for JohnLight and a second one for JaneLight.

The very good thing is that they have a special promotion running until mid of September. If you open an account via one of their agents (not directly yourself at an ATM...), you will get 10 L$ for free immediately, and 40 L$ in one week, on the account. The only bad thing is that I did open JohnLight's account before meeting the advisor... Silly me !

It is possible to check the account status and to trade on their virtual market from the website, no need to be in-world. They also offer an ATM service. You can become an ATM owner for free, and then earn money via interest from accounts opened on your ATM. So you will soon see a SL Capital Exchange ATM in the mini-shop !

Discussing with them also unveiled some information about how they get the money to pay interests. At first, they get commissions on all operations on their virtual stock exchange. They also sell adverts on their ATMs.

This makes the whole thing look quite seriously operated... time will tell.

PS: I will upgrade my balance with the new accounts later on. Stay tuned for the next surprise to come !

Group is good - Submarine camping

Yesterday, a member of "Free Money from JohnLight" shared one of its favorite camping places on the group. This is a new kind of camping location, as it is located under water ! The design is funny, as there are fishes, sharks and other sea animals moving around. We will see now for how long JohnLight can stay under water !

I will certainly publish the address of this 1L$ / 5 minutes here in a few days, to let the members of the group profit from it ! The last spot I published became saturated quickly after my post.

My normal computer is still not fixed, and the SL client crashed right now, as I'm composing this post... Camping is really hard with this old Mac, so I will probably take some time to explore new banks. I seriously envisage to move to another one on Saturday, so as to test many of them.

Not fixed yet

This is what the guy in the shop supposed to repair my main computer told me today. The new due date is mid of next week, so until then I will have to continue working on the older one, which is not so good at running the SL client for long times.

It's so slow that it makes any shop development or search for new campsites really painful. Nevertheless, I won't let this small problem stop me, and I will may be inspect the new bank that Anonymous mentioned in its comments, and camp as much as I can.

Sorry not having more to post about.

About the shop and the campsite directory

As my first customer bought the polynesian tattoo, I replaced it with a female blondie skin, which is for sale at a price of 25L$. You can still find the watches vendor, offering various kind of watches for 2L$ each, and a donation box.

The next step will be the development of a notecard or landmark giver. My plan is to use it to give away my favorite campsite addresses to the members of "Free Money from JohnLight" group, for free. One more reason to join the group, apart from the chance to win 1'000'000L$ when I will have them. This notecard / landmark distributor will be the first step of my campsite inventory project.

I've nothing else special to report, I'm camping again as much as my computer can, and my money by Midas is producing interests, so everything is under control... stay tuned !

JohnLight's landmarks book XI - Ilha Riot

I notified this place to the members of "Free Money from JohnLight" group a few days ago. It is located in Ilha Riot (70, 123, 22) and offers many pads at rates, including 3L$ / 20 minutes, 2L$ / 10 minutes and 3L$ / 13 minutes (what a strange one...).

The good thing is that they seem to be UNLIMITED ! My client crashed each time after hours, but I saw there an avatar with more than 141L$ accumulated. This kind of campsites become quite hard to find these days, so profit from it !

Remember that you can join "Free Money from JohnLight" for 15L$, and then get such information before I publish them here.

Tattoo and a watch sold - Thank you Wrager Creeley

Immediately after its opening, the shop had its first visitor: Wrager Creeley. He bought the tattoo, for which I had no copy perms, so no more tattoo for sale. I replaced the tattoo with a blondie female skin. Wrager also bought a watch. Thanks to him for being my first customer.

As you can see, Wrager is a fan of HUGE and non human avatars. The shop is in fact the mini box behind him, and you can see a corner if the pyramid watch vendor.

One big question then... how will he wear the tattoo and the watch ?

Mini Opening of my Mini Shop

Today is the mini opening day for my shop. I can't call it Grand Opening given how simple and basic is the shop ! You will find three things there: my polynesian tattoo which is for direct sale, a pyramid (what an original shape...) selling watches for 2 L$ each, and a box shaped (even more original...) donation box.

I made all of them myself, and design was not exactly my first concern. But they are all operative now, and if you have any trouble with them, please let me know. These were my first scripted objects, and I will later build a notecard distributor for giving away good campsites to the group members.

The shop is on the first floor in Club Josephina, http://slurl.com/secondlife/Gula/73/244/114

First interest transfer done - new bank ?

According to my new strategy, I went to Midas Bank today to withdraw the interests from my 10'000 L$ deposit, which were 54 L$ for 5 days. I transferred these 54 L$ by APEZ, where they won't generate any interest, but will be safe.

As every week, Midas defined a new interest rate, which is 0.16% daily, so I can expect 112 L$ until next saturday. I also received, via a comment, some information about a new bank offering 0.30% daily, and I'm waiting for additional contacts.

Campsites directory management

The issue of bad campsites, i.e. non paying ones, but also of sharing good spots has been in the air for a long while now. I did get some hints from fellow readers and group members, and I guess it's time now to build something.

One must be careful when identifying the objectives in such a project, to avoid any possible misuse. The point here is that I don't want to create a system which campsite owners could use to attack competitors by doing faked negative reports.

Another issue is the very high rate of change on the camping situation. Despite some campsite remain open for weeks, some are created, changed, and closed daily, if not hourly. A directory would then never be accurate. Moreover, re-visiting all campsites to ensure they're still as described would be an enormous task.

My idea is then to publish reports of camping sessions, not just campsites, and to give positive feed-backs only, not negative. The principle would be that campers report (to me, to a special avatar, via an object, ... ?) the place they did camp in, and the amount they made if they are happy with a place.

All the reports would then be compiled and made available to "Free Money from JohnLight" group members in a notecard that could be obtained either via my inventory or a distributor in my shop to be.

The good point in this system is that no one could use it to attacks a competitor campsite. I won't be possible either to publish wrong positive reports, because such fake reports would always come from a single reporter and won't get lot of credibility because no one would confirm them by additional reports.

On the other hand, good sites would get confirmed quickly by other people, so they would increase their credibility. If I can build an automated and dynamic system, this could be as accurate as the reports getting in.

Any comment is welcome.

Restricted operations

According to the man in the repair shop, my main computer will not be fixed before mid of next week. So my operations will be restricted until then, as I need my spare computer for other activities... nevertheless I won't stop camping nor blogging. This could even be a good opportunity to improve my strategy and planning.

The next steps in the quest are (as mentioned in answers to comments):
1) Set up the shop, potentially called "The Price is Light" (thank you Jenyca). I'm still accepting name's proposals
2) Work on a way to inventory good / bad campsites, but this is not easy for several reasons. This won't help me to save money directly, but it will kind of a community work
3) Continue the cleaning of my inventory
4) Improve my scripting knowledge to be able to create some funny things to be sold in the shop

And obviously, I will tomorrow make the first Midas interests transfer to APEZ.

Stategy working, computer broken

For the time being, Midas is working as expected, generating 11L$ a day. It's not much, but it's easy money. According to my new strategy, the first intereste transfer to APEZ will take place on saturday.

I had only few minutes for the quest last days, but I could camp and gather some freebies. The lucky chairs are also sometimes giving money away, so it is a good way to earn quickly, but it requires supervision.

The concept of the JohnLight's shop is progressing. It will obviously include a donation box, but also a selling device with goodies for low prices. Stay tune for more info on it, and if you've a better name that "JohnLight's Shop" to propose, I'm open to anything via comments.

On top of the lack of time, my main computer broke down today, so I'm working with an older spare, which is slower. I'll have to have the main one fixed tomorrow.

GUEST POST from Stroh Bing - To boldly camp as none has camped before..

JohnLight Raymaker

Has become an icon of the camping scene.
He has brought a certain nobility to it that is hard to understand.. For some reason I was proud to be camping next to JohnLight..
And in the end he was giving the money away!

Then the darkness came..
What more can you say about Ginko..

But then a Ray of Light.

Along The camping trail I have been fortunate to have found 2 great financial institutions that have helped me accumulate and safeguarded my savings.

L&L Bank & Trust - www.myllbt.com
Who have an excellent interest rate, and CEO

and

SL Capital Exchange - www.slcapex.com
The best Exchange on SL, and managed
by Arbitrage Wise.

I have decided to put JohnLight back on track with the second Ray of Light donation of 10,000 L

Live Long and Prosper

Ray of Light Founder
Stroh Bing

New strategy implemented

As you can see from the "My present balance" summary on the right hand side, I did start according to what I defined previously. The deposit by Midas was ok, except that for this week they pay 0.11% daily, instead of the 0.20% I mentionned. So this will bring only 11 L$ a day, but that's easy money.

I mention the APEZ deposit, even if it's empty for the time being. I will start to fill it up next saturday, with the first Midas interests. The plan is to do the transfers from Midas to APEZ on the week-ends, as kind of a standard procedure.

Some of you may question how I got 10'000 to invest in Midas so quickly. That's a good question, and its answer is simple. Someone from the group, which is also a freqent blog reader, kindly gave me this money after he saw the results of my loss by Ginko.

So I want to warmly thank this sponsor, because without him restarting with the new strategy would have been longer. In fact I would have had to gather the 10'000 L$ again by camping and other activities.

I'm also working on the shop where you will soon be able to get some items from JohnLight's advenutres for few Lindens. I'm also envisaging a donation box, as a very easy way to earn some additional Lindens. More on this later

A place not to go - metropole (221, 68, 23)

According to some members of the "Free Money from Johnlight" group, there are unlimited but NON PAYING dancepads in metropole (221, 68, 23). Avoid them, you will only loose your time there.

Here we go again - My new strategy

General guidelines
After days of thinking, I finally decided how to go on. First of all, the goal of this quest remains unchange: "Earn 1'000'000 L$ with no or minimal effort". I hesitated to remove the "no", but I will finally keep it.

Defining minimal however was not so easy. I first tried to define a list of "acceptable" activities, but given the large number of opportunities, the smarter way to define minimal effort is by the time dedicated to it. I'm now convinced that camping only is no longer a good strategy given how limited the camping possibilities are now.

So the best way is to define minimal effort as follows: being in SL passively in parallel to other internet activity, and actively not more than one hour per day, as an average. This is to protect my social life. Another important point is that I won't invest any real money in Second Life.

This new strategy leaves me a high freedom of ways, so here is now how I expect to earn money now, apart from camping.

Camping
Most of my income will probably be from camping. Even if I stop overnight or overday camping, except if I find a dead good spot, I maintain the 30 L$ daily objective.

Banking
I will put 10'000 L$ by Midas Bank. This should produce 20 L$ daily in interest. To avoid having too much at risk and go through the same issue than with Ginko, I will withdraw the interests weekly.

Group
The "Free Money from JohnLight" group is still active, and I will continue to animate it, and share my best money making tips with the members. I raised the joining fee to 15 L$, and I will maintain it at this level for now. It will no longer depend of my balance. I chose a fee of 15L$ so as not to be unfair with the current members who paid from 1L$ to 15L$.

And yes, I still plan to give the 1'000'000 L$ to one of the group members at the end, but not via a lottery as this is illegal in Second Life now.

Gaming, lucky chairs and other
To make life a bit more risky, I will re-start gaming where possible, and spend some time looking for lucky chairs. I don't know if the number guessing systems are still active, but if yes, I will certainly use them again.

Creating and selling objects
During my in-world travels, I gathered tons of objects I don't use, including the polynesian tattoo, and the famous black dress JaneLight got from Platinum. As I don't use them, I will put all of them on sale.

You will then be able to support my quest by buying some objects I colleted. And I could even create some of my own goodies, and sell them... more on this later...

Here we go !
I will update the strategy and ways to earn Linden Dollars easily as the process will go on, so stay tuned, Chapter 2 of JohnLight's adventures is starting... now !

It's sunday - Have a bit of fun

This post has clearly nothing to do with my usual topic of free money in Second Life, but this video is SO MUCH FUN that I could not resist to share it with you. This is by far the best SL video ever !



Apart from that, JohnLight is camping in the new place I mentionned in the previous post, and I'm still looking for a bank official to answer some questions. In fact this is how I found this video ;-)

JohnLight's landmarks book X - 2/10 and 3/10 camping

There is a new camping zone in "Te Wharau". They offer a dozen 3L$ / 20 minutes dancepads, and a bench with 2L$ / 10 minutes. The bench is limited to 20 L$, and I don't know yet about the pads.

As you can see, the quest continues, even if the bank issue is not solved yet, but I'm working on it. Yes, working, even for a no / minimal effort ;-)

Apfelland is limited !

This time, I'm sure, I experienced it myself. Not only the new dancepads in Apfelland are limited by a blue popup, but the benches as well ! The Apfelland benches at 2L$ / 10 minutes, which used to be totally time unlimited now have a 60 minutes (12 L$) time restriction.

This is one more sign of the end of unlimited camping, and today was probably my last visit there. It's crowded and slow, and now it losts its last appealing feature...

GUEST POST - The Reality of Running a Second Life Business by Josephina Bonetto

Club Josephina opened for business on Saturday 21 July 2007 at 11am SLT. Now that I am nearing the end of my first month of trading, I am writing this blog entry to provide an insight into my experience so far.

One choice I made in starting my own business was to buy mainland with no covenant. The negative side to this is there is less prim space. I purchased my first 512 sq.m parcel of land in Gula from my sign up bonus, weekly stipends, and camping proceeds for $L5, 500. I now own 2,048 sq.m in Gula, 512 sq.m in Zoshchenko and 2,048 sq.m in Salliohsis.

On average, since I opened, Club Josephina has hosted three events a week with mixed results but the club is open 24/7. Non cash prizes given away at events have included a Skybox and a Sexgen Bed.

Club Josephina Statistics:

• Group Membership 234.
• Club Managers = 2.
• Fired employees = 3.
• Dance Machines = 2.
• Total Votes Received To Date = 49.
• Total Unique Visitors To Date = 902.
• Total Unique Visitors On Opening Night = 53.
• Total Banned Residents (Griefers) = 5.
• Total Vending Spaces (Mini Mall) = 7.
• Largest Tip = $L500.
• Largest Donation = $L500.
• Total Cost of Lost/Missing/Damages Items To Date = $L5, 600.
• Total Relevant SIM Crashes = 3.

How Club Josephina Generates Income:

• 20% of all tips.
• Donations.
• Sales of my own clothing and artwork.
• Rental of vending spaces in the Mini Mall on the Upper Floor for $L100 per week for 20 prims.

Examples of Club Josephina Costs:

• Land Tier Fee for Club and Garden alone is $15USD per month.
• The original nightclub purchase cost $L2, 500, the rebuild cost nothing.
• Modifiable and copiable tip jars cost $L1, 000 to purchase.
• Modifiable and copiable dance poles cost $L3, 000 to purchase (they can be configured for camping).
• My now redundant Sploder cost $L399 to purchase.
• Advertising for the Club is currently $L50 per week. On off Search entry fee of $L30.
• Group set up costs a one time fee of $L100.
• Three contests per week with $L100 cash prize = $L300.
  

Have I made any money? Income for period 21/07/07 – 16/08/07:

• Tips/Gifts/Donations/Sales for Club Josephina = $L4, 234.
• Camping Income = $L4, 023.

Club Josephina Contact Details:

• http://slurl.com/secondlife/Gula/73/244/114
• http://secondlife-clubjosephina.moonfruit.com/
• http://secondlifeclubjosephina.blogspot.com/
• Join Group “Club Josephina” (no joining fee).
• IM Josephina Bonetto for TP/LM/Info.

Related Groups:

• Josephina Bonetto Holdings
• Postcard From Utopia

The end of endless camping ?

As explained in my previous post about establishing a new strategy, I started touring the banks, but also the campsites I had in my inventory. It turned out that most of the camping sites just disapeared, probably because the money was coming from gambling.

Some campsites survived, but a vast majority of them became time limited, so it is no longer possible to have overnight camping sessions anymore for the time being. This could be one more obstacle, but I guess I can overcome it by doing evening sessions, just restarting the camping periodically. This is possible as long as the time limit is not too short.

More to come later on about the banks, the new strategy, and may be some more than minimal effort...

Apfelland under smoke

While I was looking for a spot in Apfelland today, the whole place was suddenly filled with kind of a black smoke. Apart from reducing visibility to zero, it also made the whole sim totally unusable.

The other problem in Apfelland these days is that as it is the best camping spot (2 / 10 unlimited) these days, it is very busy, laggy, and crowded.

Finally I moved to Camazotz, but there are some changes there as well, about which I will report later on.

Second Life client optimisation

This post is an old idea which remained a draft for weeks, and this relatively quiet period is a good time to publish it, especially as it has nothing to to with banking.

As all long time campers know, the SecondLife client is consuming memory over time (the so-called memory leak) and requires quite a powerful computer. Even if the later versions are more stable, there are some possibilities to make it run longer.

All the settings can be accessed via the Preferences menu. What you can do to help a mid-class PC to run the client longer is:

1) In the General tab, select to never display the names, this will remove the numerous labels over the avatars.
2) In the Graphics tab, reduce the Draw Distance to its minimum,and chose "Sun and moon only" in the Lighting Detail box
3) In the Graphics Detail tab, put Terrain Detail to low, and all mesh detail cursors to the minimum (left side)
4) In Adv. Graphics tab, diminish the Fog Distance Ratio
5) In Audio & Video tab, check the "Mute" box
6) Disable the Voice Chat via the Voice Chat tab

Doing all of that, you will reduce the bandwith and CPU requirements, making your client more stable.

Touring the banks

I spent some time today and yesterday looking around for banks in Second Life. Strangely, some of them are offering daily rates equivalent to the ex-Ginko ones. I resisted the temptation to put any money here for the moment.

The remaining question is still the same I already raised in previous post. How can they offer such a rate ? What kind of economical activity can offer more than 44% a year ? If the answer is that they pay interests with the new deposits, their fate will be identical to Ginko's, so I don't really want to renew the experience...

Regarding this blog, you will see that I now opened comments to anyone, not only blogger users. I hope it won't get spammed by commenting bots...

Bad news again - this time from Apfelland

I had quite a bad surprise today, while JohnLight was camping in Apfelland. I was working on the various banks and techniques to earn easy Linden Dollars, when the familliar blue pop-up window appeared.

The question in it was "Are you still interested in camping ? If you don't answer, you will be unseated !". I did not answer, as a test, and JohnLight got ejected from the spot, standing up automatically.

Apfelland was one of the last surviving unlimited campsites. Ok, it was alwas very busy, laggy, and finding a spot was sometime just impossible, but once you got one, it was good. These times are over, and this is one more bad news.

In my view, filling questionnaires to earn money is more and more an option, I will do some tests with that, to see how much work this activity does involve.

Recovery strategy

The challenge continues ! I lost most of my money in the Ginko collapse, but after a few days thinking, I decided to continue, but with a few changes in my approach.

However I will modify some points of my strategy. Yes, this is another way to say that I will have a strategy now. It is not clearly defined now, but here are some general guidelines.

First I will redefine what is minimal effort. It is not impossible that I will make more than camping, i.e. answering polls, or such stuff. Secondly, given how important a savings bank is, I will try to find all the existing ones. Thirdly, I will try to have a more organised inventory, and kind of a camping planning.

I will also certainly redefine my daily minimum, and establish a follow-up system, more detailled than the present text label in the blog.

All of this should keep me busy for a few days, but I will try to update quickly. Any suggestion is welcome, as always.

Good time to buy Ginko Perpetual Bonds ?

The title of this post can seem silly, but it is in fact a good teaser. It is clear to anybody that it is NOT a good time to sell the Ginko Perpetual Bonds, because they will probably initially go down, and tons of people will sell at any price to get some cash out of them because they need some.

My question now is simple. As it is bad time to sell, is it then a good time to buy ? It is presumably possible to buy such bonds at low price because of the people needing cash. If later the bonds price go up for any reason, this could generate profits.

If any financial specialist wants to comment it, feel free...

Everything clear now about Ginko

As announced by Ginko, I got an account by WSE (www.wselive.com), and I received one Ginko Perpetual Bond (GPB) for each Linden Dollar I had by Ginko.

I had to go to a WSE ATM to obtain a password, and then I could access my account. The next bad surprise was that these bonds are currently worth 0.16L$ each ! So I lost 84% if my total in the Ginko crash.

As I'm back, I was able to get back online as well, and I saw that many campsites did vanish, and the lands are now for sale. This is probably becasue they got all their money from gambling, so they have nothing left to redistribute via camping.

The group "Free Money from JohnLight" is still active, and I got some feed-back and support from various member, and I want to thank them for that, it is good to feel such interest in what I'm trying to do.

The next steps are to decide what to do with the bonds, sell them yet and loose 84%, or hope they will get more value, which is not so likely, and keep them for a while. I must also find new campsites, and I hope the group will be helpful for that.

The quest for the 1'000'000 L$ is not yet stopped, so stay tuned !

Unknown balance !

This is one more post about Ginko, as my camping activities are still suspended as I'm on vacation. As you can see on the right column, my balance is unknown, as Ginko decided to convert all deposits into Ginko Perpetual Bonds, as explained on their website. I copied their last announcement at the end of this post, as I'm not sure how long it will remain online.

I did not receive any direct information from Ginko yet about the account to be created, where is my money, and what I can do with the bonds. What is clear nontheless is that my goal of becoming millionaire in SecondLife by doing nothing can not be achieved withoud a savings bank (see my previous post on this topic).

I will now wait until I'm back from vacation, and give a thought to all of this to decide if and how to continue...

The request for posts is still open, so if you want to express yourself, it's the right time.

Dear accountholders,

Ginko Financial was established in December 2004 at a time when Second Life had less than 20,000 residents. As one of the strongest brands in Second Life we have seen the economy grow to many millions of residents and thousands choose Ginko Financial as their preferred financial services provider.

As you probably already know, Ginko Financial has experienced some challenges in these last couple of weeks. 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.

We had some hope that calm would return to the public and we could resume normal operation, but that does not seem to be likely or even possible anymore. Drastic steps have to be taken in order to protect YOUR wealth while giving an escape valve to anyone who is in panic or simply in need. We are not going to vanish and the investments we made still exist and will not be sold off.

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.

All accountholders will have an account automatically created on the World Stock Exchange (www.wselive.com). Customers will receive one bond with a face value of L$1 for every L$1 they have deposited in Ginko Financial. Each Ginko Perpetual Bond will yield L$0.03 or 3% of face value per quarter (every three months). Ginko Financial will be actively purchasing these bonds in order to help keep prices at as high a level as possible.

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.

Regards,
Nicholas Portocarrero / Andre Sanchez

Ginko news again (Still away from home)

Still no camping as I'm on my holliday spot and have tons of more interesting things to do, but I just wanted to give an update on what is going on by Ginko, as I was myself curious about it.

The Ginko website contains a recent and quite detailled update about what went on, and what is the situation. Basic appologies, and few information about how the things will go on with the withdrawal limit, and so on.

The statistics on the website show a volume over 55'000'000 L$ for the last seven days, and I bet it's mostly withdrawals.

The last totals are:
L$104,042,037 in deposits
L$42,059,403 in term deposits

The interesting thing in these figures is that the term deposits increased since I started tracking them ! This indicates (at least in my view) that people trusting Ginko tend to use more term deposits, because of the better interest, and the other try to get their money out.

I hope now that the trend on savings deposits will stop soon, because moving from 150 million L$ to 104 million L$ over 5 days does not sound good. Stay tuned on this blog for next updates on this hot topic.

Ginko YoYo going up again. (Post from the Cannes)

Today, Ginko changed its daily interest rate again, it is back to 0.1%. This is good news, and probably a good sign for the future as well.

What is a bit less encouraging is the total deposited in savings accounts, which is now down to L$139,536,198 ! An ammount close to 10'000'000 L$ has been withdrawn over less than 2 days ! Hey, at least they had money to pay it !

I'm now on my holliday spot, so no camping, just a short update of this blog while checking my mails.

Summary before leaving

I will be on vacation for the next week, and I will probably not have an internet connection there, so here is kind of a summary post before this.

From the beginning, I could earn about 13'000 L$, part of them being interests from Ginko interests. I used various camping places, have been banned from some because I was saying too much about their rates.

The media ball mechanism also helped me to earn some more money, being a reseller. In the misc category also comes the trick with the Debug Menu, making possible to stay connected permanently, without going idle or disconnected.

But the "creation" I'm more proud of the certainly the "Free Money from JohnLight" group. It was originally intended as a way for me to inform members about good campsites, but it is actually going much farther than that. It became kind of a community, in which active members also share their campsite locations, tips for easy money, views of the Second Life future.

We also had interesting discussions about the gambling ban, what SL economy will become, and so on. And as you know, Josephina, the very first group member, is now running a club, an she shares her feed-back on that with the group, making it really interesting.

I wish all readers a good next week, have fun, take care, earn as much free lindens as you can ! See you soon

Call for guest posts

In order to make this blog more open, I'm looking for guest bloggers. This can be for a single post, or a series, as long as it remains focused on Second Life economics, camping and other way to make and manage money in SL.

So if you want to contribute with more than comments, send me your posts to johnlight.raymaker@gmail.com. I will review them before posting, and I don't promise I will post all of them.

Let express yourself !

JohnLight's landmarks book IX - The 100 L$ Dance Dance

For the time being, my favorite campsite is the Dance Dance in Monevole, which I already told about here. It is not particularly quick, and its limit is 100 L$.

But compared to other campsites, it has two advantages: it is stable, and not too crowded (yet). Given how hard it is to find good camping in since the gambling ban, it is a good place to be.

Last Ginko News

No, this blog is not becoming specialized in Ginko, but as things continue to move there, and given the imporance to me of a savings bank, I care of this changes.

Ginko now implemented a withdrawal queue, in which each withdrawal request is put, and then processed on a first come first serve basis. Last time I checked, there was about 3'000'000 L$ of requests waiting.

The statistics from their website are now:
Savings deposits 150'791'283 L$ (was 154'962'323L$)
Term deposits 35'955'842 L$ (was 32'233'381 L$)

and this clearly shows money flowing out. Add to that the 3 millions waiting in the withdrawal queue...

Ginko on free fall ?

When I posted the bad news about Ginko, I did not expected to post again on this topic so soon... but Ginko again announced a reduction of the daily interest rates on the savings accounts, which do now pay 0.01% daily. This is 10 times less than three days ago, and 13 times less than one week ago !

Apparently the process is speeding up...

Bad news from Ginko again - Oops

The following text is an extract from the Ginko website.

"Please be aware, your withdrawal limit will show as L$0 if there isn't enough available to withdraw. Alternately, it will show you how much you can withdraw given the current reserve available, up to L$5,000 per day. This is a temporary implementation."

Not enough available to withdraw ?

How bad is that ? Ok, they give you tons of warnings when you open your account, and they state there are no guarantees, and so on. Anyway, that sounds bad, especially as this morning, the ATM said my limit is zero !

The website also mentions robots being used to withdraw, which is illegal. But if people was their money back so madly, that's not exactly good sign.

To be able to follow the story, here are present values from the Ginko statistics:

Total in savings deposits: L$154,962,383
Total in term deposits: L$35,223,381
Accounts created in the last 7 days: 322

We will see in the next days if there will be a Ginko collapse or if they will survive. So a few questions to you now. Do you think Ginko will go bankrupt ? Do you use them, and if yes, what is your plan ? Withdraw as much as you can, or do you maintain your trust ?

The importance of a savings bank... to me

I will not repeat here all what I said in my first post about the interests paid by a savings bank and their important in what I try to do. Basically, earning 1'000'000 L$ on a base of 30 L$ per day would last for 90 years without a bank paying daily interest, and 10 years with such a bank.

From this it is clear that I won't become a millionaire by doing nothing if I can't have a bank to help me growing my fortune.

For other activities in Second Life, the use of banks makes things easier when you have to pay salaries, or to share money accross accounts. But the savings part is then much less important. APEZ for example is doing a good job for the kind of tasks a business owner has to do.

So savings accounts are probably helpful only to people like me, wanting money out of nothing.

The total withdraws from Ginko within the last 13 hours are about half a million Linden Dollars, on a total on saving accounts of 154 million dollars. So yes the money is flowing out, but not so dramatically.

I was not so wrong...

Apparently my hypothesis about the grid being under attack was quite correct. According to a paper from the second life insider, the attack was from a group known as the Patriotic Nigras...

Ok, I may sometimes sound strange, but not this time. Call me JohnLight Paranoïd...

PS: yes, I will come back to the topic soon ;-)

Is Ginko in trouble ? Interest rate lowered again !

Today, Ginko lowered the daily interest rate from 0.1% to 0.05%. This is the lower rate since I started earning in Second Life. Another bad sign is that my ATM told me that the maximum I could withdraw today was 0L$ ! But may be this is because of what follows...

Additionally to the savings account, Ginko is offering term deposits. Basicall a blocked account from which you can not withdraw the money until a fixed term. The benefit to the customer is an higher interest rate.

As I don't need my money now, I opened such a deposit for 5'000 L$ this morning, and I got a daily rate of 0.19% over 30 days. This evening, when I saw that they lowered the daily rate for saving accounts, I went back to the term deposit, and I saw that they offer no 0.25% ! So I opened a scond one, of 7'000 L$ for 30 days...

I cross fingers now, hoping that they won't collapse within the next 30 days !

One computer, multiple Second Life clients

The theme of having alts (alternate avatars) to multiply the camping sessions has already been discussed on this blog, and you know that JaneLight is helping JohnLight to camp intesively.

To do this, I use two computers, as only one instance of the the Second Life client can run per computer. I had many in-world questions about that, and many people were disapointed by the "one client per PC" answer.

Nevertheless, if your computer is powerful enough (and I mean really powerful here), there is a solution using virtualisation. The idea is to use special software (Virtual PC, VMWare, Parallels Desktop on Intel Macs) to simulate a second PC, which is kind of isolated from the physical one.

Doing so, you can run one Second Life client per virtual PC, and one on the PC itself. But once again, you need quite a robust computer to do that. I tried on my MacBook, but running the native Second Life client, the virtual PC, and a second client in it was just too much. It was so slow that it was un-usable.

I know some people using this technique intensively, running up to four clients on a single physical PC, so their camping sessions are really effective, but this needs a lot of avatar management and monitoring.

Post number 100 - Back to business with some worries

For the 100th post of this blog, I have good news. Apparently, Linden Lab finally achieved to make Second LIfe usable again, and I could restart my camping activities. JaneLight even made 100 L$ in an overnight camping in the YAKA-CLUB on Camazotz !

As today was national holiday, I also had some good camping during the day, as can be seen on my balance indicator.

On the bad side, I must report that Ginko lowered its daily interest rate from 0.13% to 0.1%. There were rumors on them not having enough cash compared to the total of deposits... This lead to a limitation of withdrawals to 5'000 L$ a day, later increased to 10'000 L$ a day, making the rumor even stronger. About Ginko, my personal question is what do they to with the money to be able to offer such a rate (44% a year). I will develop that in a next post.

After the gambling ban, and the technical troubles last days, it is hard to analyze the economical statistics published by Linden Lab. Given the strong change this could have on the SL economy, I will keep an eye on these stats during the next days.