Will Inworld Banks and Stock Exchanges Ever Be Trustworthy?
I bumped into a writer for another site at the store today, and he and I had a brief discussion about business in SecondLife- namely the financial aspects, and he seemed critical of what I wrote about. He pointed out – quite correctly – that a 40% return on investment within Second Life is suspicious at best when it comes to banking. Of course, he isn’t wrong, but we can’t really demonstrate that he is correct either. Linden Lab statistics don’t show the return on investment that people make – it simply shows how much money is transferred between avatars, how much is cashed in and how much is cashed out. Still, I’ll agree with my new writer acquaintance. 40% return on investment can be pretty steep. The easy thing to do with banks and such that make such claims is to hit them with a broad brush and call them scams. Of course, if they gave 8% interest per annum, they could still be scams. The interest rate promised really has nothing to do with how trustworthy the bank is. Interest rate
