David Talbot of MIT Technology Review (no that's not him in the pic ... but a RL person named Stephanie Roberts who got ripped off in SL) in "The Fleecing of the Avatars" discusses the mercenary world of ecommerce in SL and profiles the Ginko scandal: Ginko--operated by an avatar called Nicholas Portocarrero, whose real identity is not clear--persuaded hundreds of people to deposit their Linden dollars. The reasons for what happened next are murky, but the results were clear enough: the "bank" vanished, and depositors say their money did, too. In July 2007, residents began clustering around machines to try to recover their money after Ginko began restricting withdrawal amounts. Then Ginko announced that deposits were now in "Ginko perpetual bonds" rather than Linden dollars. Those bonds soon plunged in value, and in October, they ceased to exist. The reported losses may have totaled $700,000, according to Ben Duranske, a lawyer based in Idaho who writes a blog on virtual legal issues. Some Second Lifers have reported losing thousands of dollars in Ginko. Roberts is among the luckier ones: she says she lost only her $144 in savings. But the point isn't just that somebody other than Roberts ended up with her money. What may be most significant is that nothing happened to whoever may have taken it. Her money disappeared into the 3-D ether" http://www.technologyreview.com/Infotech/19844/?a=f
1 comment:
thanks for good pointer - different variations in flow of exchange (money is just virtue) in virtual domain is much of interest, because what we have in-real-life is well known. What we have in not-so-limited-by-RL-constraints places like SL is different behavior and probably different game ;)
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