Eggs and Basket

As Mr. Oh very appropriately commented on my last post, I'm putting all my eggs in the same basket, and it is true that last time (Ginko...) this strategy gave catastrophic results.

However the think is a bit different this time, because all of the banking industry in SecondLife is at risk with the new ruling LL seems to put in place. As I already explained a bank is vital for me to achieve my goal.

So if all baskets fall down, my eggs will be broken anyway. As I have not a lot of time, diversifying outside banking is not possible, so the fate of my quest is strongly bound to the fate of SL banks...

Banco ! All In JTIC !

The anouncement by Linden Lab to remove all ATMs except those from registered banks (?) created a huge bang and mini-panic on the stock market.

My personal decision is to call for "Banco !" and put all my money in JT Investment Certificates ! So I now hold 20020 JTIC shares and no "cash" on my SL Capital Exchange account. I made this investment for three reasons:

1. Show my support to Arbitrage Wise and all the team at JT Financials
2. LL's new rules seems to apply to interests, not dividends ;-)
3. Thanks to some selling lemmings I could get JTIC shares for 0.65 L$ each !

If JTF was to fully collapse - which I think will not happen - I will lose everything. Anyway my challenge can't be achieved without a bank paying interests...

I wish new successes to JTF and Arb ! You have all my support, guys !

LindenLab to regulate banks in SecondLife !

LindenLab posted yesterday on their official blog a post saying they will start to remove ATMs from SecondLide as of 22 of January !

The only way a bank could continue to operate in SL is to register with LL:

"We will not apply this policy to companies who submit a registration statement, charter, or other applicable license from a governing regulatory authority, or who are merely conducting marketing or education, but not accepting payments."

As a reaction, many people started to withdraw their money from banks, including from JT Financials and the SL Capital Exchange. Consequently cash withdrawals from JTF has been limited (see this post from Arbitrage Wise in the forums).

For the time being I do trust the team at JTF to manage this situation, even if I'm not really surprised by LL decision. My money is still by JTF and partly invested in SLCapex, and remember that even if the withdrawal stop may look "Ginko-ish" the reasons are totally different: Ginko was short of cash - JTF is not !

So no panic, and let's see how things will go on ! The LL decision is new, and JTF will submit for a registration, so the best for the time being is wait and see. There could even be good business to do !

Post number 201 - Looking back

This blog was born on the 1st of June 2007, 4 months and 26 days ago, and this is post number 201... a good time to look at all what I've done in SecondLife since.

I started with the goal of making money easily, using camping and banks. Simple plan, just a matter of how long I could camp and how much I could get out of the bank. I quickly learnt how find good camping spots, and how to re-configure the Second Life client to avoid being disconnected after 30 minutes of idle time.

While camping, I met people who are now good friends and who teach me a lot. I particularly think of Josephina Bonetto, who is now running Club Josephina. Jo also suggested to create a group to share ideas and good camping spots with other campers. I made it, and we are now 82 members in "Free Money from JohnLight Raymaker". Campsite sharing continues to go on, I regularly post good adresses to the group, and some other active members do it as well. It even happend that I used the group to find new campsites for myself ! I also decided that when I will get the 1'000'000L$, I will give it to one of the members of the group.

Jo also suggested to create an alt, a second avatar so as to be able to camp more, using my spare computer. I knew later than some SL players are running up to 8 avatars simultaneously ! When I met Jo, she was envisaging to buy a small piece of land to be able to change clothing in a quiet place... Not only she made it, but she is now running a night club and renting appartments !

As my wealth was increasing, I lost nearly all of it (10'000L$ by that time) when Ginko bank collapsed. This has been hard period, and I one lesson I learnt was to keep a separate reserve in a safe place. Since then I keep 10% of my total earnings apart. At this point an other important people comes in the story: Stroh Bing. He was kind enough to put me back on track, with a gift to compensate for what I lost in Ginko collapse !

Another problem hit the camping community at the same period: LindenLab made gambling illegal in Second Life. As gambling was a main source of income for camping operators, the number of campsites was strongly reduced, as well as the payrates and maximal earnings.

Another important people in my story is Arbitrage Wise, CEO of JT Financials, and SL Capital exchange. Apart from giving me very interesting inside views of a SL bank, he gave me 5'000L$ to invest on SL Capital Exchange ! Until now my results as a day trader are not exactly good, these 5'000L$ are now worth... 3'800 L$. Ooops. I'm still looking for better investment strategy.

More recently, I organized two contests to animate the little commuinity that is forming arount me and this blog. This was a good opportunity to reward friends I met through the group. They are way too numerous now to be all mentionned here, and I don't want to make any jealous... I won't cite bad people either, I'm in a positive mood right now.

To close this mini restrospective, I can say that what started as a purely economical quest turned into a passionating human adventure. It had up and downs, I met all kind of people, we exchanged views and ideas. I want to warmly thank all of you, who made SecondLife part of my Real Life...

And now, turn towards future, and see how to get this million Linden Dollars !

PS: Genie, you're the sweetest person I met in SL, I could not finish this post without talking of you.

Back for more - High Yield Deposit: Done !

I've been away, and then busy over the next days, so I don't have a lot of things to report. The most important thing is that I finally achieve to get 8'000 of the JT Financial High Yield bonds ! Thanks a lot to Reverend Chapman who mentionned in a comment that these bonds can be exchanged on the SL Capital Exchange !

This makes these bonds much better than the term deposit that Ginko issued before they collapsed, because they can be sold at (nearly) anytime. If I feel any risk with JTF, I will sold the bonds.

I also decided to put only two thirds of my JTF deposit in the bonds, to avoid losing too much in case of trouble. So my strategy is now to put my camping savings by JTF on my standard account, to let the bonds generate interests, while still having 10% of my balance safe by APEZ.

The non-human avatar contest with 400L$ to earn is still open, you have until tomorrow 12PM to send your best non-human avatar. I already got some really surprising ones !

High Yield Deposits Announced By JTFinancials

JT Financials promised for a while that high yield deposit will become possible soon. Now the soon seems sooner than ever. There is an entry in the SLCapex forum about what JTF will offer.

From mid of October, it should be possible to buy 1.00L$ bonds, and JTF will re-buy them mid of April, at 1.44L$ each. It is quite a long period of time, particularly as time in SL is much quicker than in real life, but it's also a very interesting deal. 44% increase over half a year ! This corresponds to 0.2% daily.

As I don't need the money I'm saving, this will be perfect for me. The only remaining question is "do I trust JTF enough to go for a long term investment ?". This is by far not an easy one to answer... hopefully, I've got until mid of october !

I plan to post a detailled post this week-end about my financial strategy, and compare how I'm doing with what was planned. And may be some fun post on Sunday...

Help me - help you - open a JTFinancials account

Starting on the 17th of September, JTFinancials is making a contest amongst its affiliates. The winner will be the affiliate with the larger number of new accounts opened within a given period of time !

So if you want to help me, you can go to the shop, in Club Josephina (SLURL in the links section), and open an account by paying the ATM on first floor ! So you will also receive 0.12% daily on your deposit, and may be I will be the winner of their contest !

I'm expecting you ! Contact me if you need more information or instruction how to open your account !

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.

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 !

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.

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

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

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...

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 !

4009 by Ginko - 108 by Apez

I will test for you another bank, called Apez. They offer much more services than Ginko, including web banking, multiple accounts, payment to any avatar, automated payments for employers, and so on.

It is not clear what is their interest rate now, but I will give them a try. It is also good not to put all my L$ in a single bank, just in case. Will see how it goes on with them. I could also test SL-exchange, which seems to be the LL bank.

No new brilliant campsites found today, so I left JaneLight and JohnLight by Apfelland, each at 2 / 10 camping.

The group registration fee for "Free Money from JohnLight" is still 4 L$ a day.

New Ginko rate - 2623.15 L$ by Ginko

Total camping bring 73 L$ more by Ginko. It appears that the new rate of 0.13% per day comes from a Ginko change (it was 0.09% a day before), so that's good for me !

I also figured out what I will do with the million once I will have it, but shhhhhhh, this is still a secret for the time being. Stay tuned, because it could become your million !

More on that later, both JohnLight and JaneLight camping by Platinum again, which is definetly the best camping spot for the time being.