Second Life Virtual Bank Now Tops 100 Million L$ On Deposit (370k-USD)
Growth of ‘Virtual Game Currency’ such as the Linden dollar from Second Life, is booming on the internet. With such widespread use, new businesses, organizations and concepts are being created to exploit these young financial worlds. One such business is Ginko Financial. Ginko takes advantage of the excess deposits of Linden $’s quietly sitting in players’ accounts.
Ginko offer a savings account with a daily yield and allows players to make money on their spare L$’s. Once deposits have built up, they loan out the Linden $’s to other ’suitable’ users and charge a higher rate.
The operation is similar to a bank, however, these being virtual dollars… no regulation is required. The system is quite successful and currently there are over 100,000,000 (million) Linden $’s on deposit with Ginko Financial. The exchange rate for the Linden $ is actually published by Reuters.
A nice gentleman by the name of ‘Adam Reuters’ is Reuters’ bureau chief in Second Life. Well, his real name is is Adam Pasick, and he is a a veteran tech and media journalist. Adam’s desk is a very informative and up to date section. Take a quick look here…
At today’s exchange rate the 100 million in Linden $’s on deposit at Ginko is worth about $375k in USD. Not bad for a virtual world.
These type of ‘real world’ financial applications being applied to a virtual world should be on the rise in the coming months and years. It seems possible, that today early in this industry’s growth, there may be a lot of big opportunities for knowledgeable entrepreneurs to establish business links between the virtual world and the brick & mortar financial world.
While there is some opposition from the game companies to exchanging virtual currency into fiat money, there does not seem to be any opposition to loaning out the V$.
Wow, I read about Second Life a good while back in a magazine about a woman who made a full time income from it. I thought it sounded great then but I didn’t know how big it would actually become. Amazing!
To be sure, more research should be done on this article now and a follow up because over time, Ginko “took the money and ran”, disappearing. Check out forums and complaints, and the involvement between Ginko and the WSE in Second Life to get all your information before making up your minds.
Second Life is a wonderful virtual environment that isn’t all about sex as the media seems liking to spread.