Making 30k-50k A Year Selling On Second Life, Is It Possible?

[Phil Deakins]

I may open a can of worms here, but I have no sympathy at all concerning your losses due to gambling being made illegal here. It was your choice to make money out of people's desire to gamble, knowing that, for some, it is addiction. Even so, L$150k isn't much to lose.

I am sorry that you lost ~L$1M when SL banks folded but I never understood why people put their financial trust in anonymous, or untouchanble, users. Cashing out would have been much more sensible, imo. For small amounts, ones own account was always highly suitable. My guess is that some people liked to play RL in SL, which, for them, included using banks.

[Bobbie Faulds]

Gambling left for several reasons. First was the US government wanted LL to send out 1099's for gambling income. Next was the overseas banking laws that were passed internationally. Also, many of the owners of casinos weren't paying out the winnings like they should.

As for the banks. One went belly up because they were underfunded. Then the US and international banking laws were changed and kicked in. 

With so many different laws, rules and regulations that had to be kept up with, LL would have had to hire several people full time to keep up with the laws and the paperwork on top of the expense of issuing the 1099 forms. SO they decided it wasn't worth it and closed it all down.

 

[Aethelwine]

I knew there were linden exchanges, but I didn't know there were banks.

Why would anyone store their Lindens in a virtual bank rather than cashing them out to a proper bank or just hold on to them in their account?

[Syo Emerald]

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Aethelwine wrote:

I knew there were linden exchanges, but I didn't know there were banks.

Why would anyone store their Lindens in a virtual bank rather than cashing them out to a proper bank or just hold on to them in their account?

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I also never heard of any SL bank. For the time I have an account (which will be six years this summer) banks were not allowed by the ToS.

What (sort of recently) vanished were the thrid party exchanges, which had to go because of new laws.

[Qie Niangao]

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Aethelwine wrote:

Why would anyone store their Lindens in a virtual bank rather than cashing them out to a proper bank or just hold on to them in their account?

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That's easy: because it was a Ponzi scheme that paid stupidly unrealistic "interest" on "deposits". At the time, however, SL was growing by leaps and bounds so unfounded irrational exuberance was par for the course.

These weren't "banks" at all, they were just role-played swindles of their depositors' spacebux.

Google "Ginko Second Life" for more of the real chain of events.