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Banking in Second Life


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Wandering around in SL I have seen many businesses that mimic the real world but I have yet to find a bank, I suspect an issue of trust exists with user run banks. So maybe this should be a feature of 2L itself?

An experienced user I am friends with on other social media warned me not to ever accept something from someone I do not know because sometimes they have scripts that steal linden's. I'm guessing even stores could sell products that do that (in my past I was a gray hat hacker until friends got arrested, we never stole anything but we liked to find vulnerabilities and trust is easy to exploit, such as trust a store is not a front)

Anyway what I want to do is budget for SL - say buying USD $50 a month whether I used that much previous month or not, and put excess into a bank that requires 2FA on my smart phone to withdraw if and when I need the Linden's for something more expensive than is in my balance.

Such a bank could even do fractional reserve lending but that isn't necessary, just a thought for how SL could monetize the feature. I hate capitalism but it does give motivation.

Anyway just thought I'd throw it out there and see if there are thoughts.

2FA doesn't have to be to a phone, could be e-mail with confirm link to account holder. But some means of letting me build up Lindens while minimizing risk of theft would be appreciated.

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We did used to have them. Quite a few at one point. But there was no regulation or financial protection and, more times than you would think, said bank vanished from SL with everyones money. There were even banks that would give you a loan in SL though god knows how they ever expected to be able to get their money back if someone chose not to pay.

But, much like in world casinos, and the rest of the RL world, the US government stepped in to ruin everyones fun xD. Well not so much banks but the in world casinos were pretty cool.

I miss camping chairs if anything and the money tree

Edited by ItHadToComeToThis
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27 minutes ago, ItHadToComeToThis said:

Further thought. I wonder what the legality would be if you had a prize board, much like the ones that select a letter and give an avatar who's name starts with that letter a prize, but instead of a object prize it gave you say 10 lindens.

That's called a "punchboard" in RL, and it used to be a racket in some mob-run areas of the US.

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1 hour ago, Pipfrosch said:

Anyway what I want to do is budget for SL - say buying USD $50 a month whether I used that much previous month or not, and put excess into a bank that requires 2FA on my smart phone to withdraw if and when I need the Linden's for something more expensive than is in my balance.

What many do for this situation, is create an alt account, and then transfer (pay) their excess lindens to their alt.   When you find something that you want to use those lindens for, log the alt account in and transfer them back to  your main account.   It's easiest to transfer lindens back and forth when you  and your alt are friends (so you can choose their name from your friends list instead of using search (and possibly choosing the wrong name from the search results).  The alt doesn't need to be anything fancy - you can leave it as the initial starter avatar, and it doesn't need payment info on file, and you can give it the same email as your main account if you want.    You can pay lindens to your alt without your alt being online, but in order for your alt to send lindens back to you, your alt needs to log in long enough to do that. 

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21 minutes ago, Moira Timmerman said:

What many do for this situation, is create an alt account, and then transfer (pay) their excess lindens to their alt.   When you find something that you want to use those lindens for, log the alt account in and transfer them back to  your main account.   It's easiest to transfer lindens back and forth when you  and your alt are friends (so you can choose their name from your friends list instead of using search (and possibly choosing the wrong name from the search results).  The alt doesn't need to be anything fancy - you can leave it as the initial starter avatar, and it doesn't need payment info on file, and you can give it the same email as your main account if you want.    You can pay lindens to your alt without your alt being online, but in order for your alt to send lindens back to you, your alt needs to log in long enough to do that. 

It's always best to have the alt logged in when transfering funds or log it in immediately after transfer to check. There have been times when things have gone awry (through no fault of LL's) and the funds don't transfer. Then you're kind of screwed. Never just transfer without checking.

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Just now, Selene Gregoire said:

It's always best to have the alt logged in when transfering funds or log it in immediately after transfer to check. There have been times when things have gone awry (through no fault of LL's) and the funds don't transfer. Then you're kind of screwed. Never just transfer without checking.

Good point.  It's not something I've done a lot, so I guess I've just been lucky so far.

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1 minute ago, Moira Timmerman said:

Good point.  It's not something I've done a lot, so I guess I've just been lucky so far.

It doesn't happen often and I haven't heard of it happening in a long time, but you never know. For some things it's better to be safe, than sorry. 

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3 hours ago, Pipfrosch said:

2L

Just saying: in all my years, I've never seen anyone referring to SL as "2L". At first glance, this rather seems as if you were talking about L$ 2, like the inworld currency, which is often shortened to 2L.

3 hours ago, Pipfrosch said:

An experienced user I am friends with on other social media warned me not to ever accept something from someone I do not know because sometimes they have scripts that steal linden's.

This can happen and those L$ deduct scripts will slap a big, fat, alerting, yellow alert in your face. Something you cannot miss. They cannot work if you only accepted such a scripted item and have it sitting in your inventory. There is also lots of other stuff like deformers and whatsoever. Phishing, too, with fake Marketplace links and such. 
Plus a lot of ... less techincally savvy... folks, who might claim that there are viruses in SL which infected their computer... just no. With your background, you'll probably figure out why.

General rule of thumb: if it's too good to be true, it is quite likely a scam.

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7 hours ago, ItHadToComeToThis said:

Further thought. I wonder what the legality would be if you had a prize board, much like the ones that select a letter and give an avatar who's name starts with that letter a prize, but instead of a object prize it gave you say 10 lindens.

I haven't seen anything to say doing this is not allowed, lucky chairs and lucky boards by the creator of Midnight Mania have this function you can set it to only or randomly pay a fixed or random amount between two values to a letter or wild card. These days I don't see anywhere using this or they use a different lucky letter device

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1 hour ago, Claireschen Hesten said:

I haven't seen anything to say doing this is not allowed, lucky chairs and lucky boards by the creator of Midnight Mania have this function you can set it to only or randomly pay a fixed or random amount between two values to a letter or wild card. These days I don't see anywhere using this or they use a different lucky letter device

As far as I understand the gaming rules, games are only restricted (limited to skill-gaming regions only) if the player has to pay to play AND if there is a random element to the result. A lucky chair/lucky board/midnight mania doesn't require payment to play - though requiring a group membership to a paid group is a bit of a grey area. Some sploders get around the rule by guaranteeing that you'll get at least your stake back as a minimum. 

Personally I haven't seen any lucky boards or MM boards that pay out money instead of gifts, but I've seen devices in certain places that will pay out a small number of L$ to a random person in the area, if there are enough people that have been there for enough time. 

Back on the topic of banks in SL, there used to be some but they got banned because they were completely unregulated, some of them disappeared with all their customers' money and they were probably used for money-laundering and other fraud. 

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the most rational way is to get yourself a paypal account and link that, then just add how much you want to be allowed to spend to your paypal acount. or get a prepaid credit card and link it to your account and do the same. once its empty you cant spend anymore until you add more to it. so should anyone ever trick you.. the most they can take is what is in your linden account and should they ever steal your account, the most they can ever get access to is what is in your prepaid account. its far safer doing it that way then linking an actual bank account to any account.. main or alt.

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An alternative - You don’t need complicated alts etc and LL are still some away from 2FA.

if you want to “bank” Linden dollars simply do a limit sell on the Lindex 20 points below the best Sell rate. 

When you want to return the Linden dollars to your account simply cancel your Lindex Limit Sell transaction.    Being 20 points below your sale will simply “park”.

LL is a Money Service Business per their FinCen listing, so you will never see any legal bank within SL now.  

 

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22 minutes ago, Charlotte Bartlett said:

An alternative - You don’t need complicated alts etc and LL are still some away from 2FA.

if you want to “bank” Linden dollars simply do a limit sell on the Lindex 20 points below the best Sell rate. 

When you want to return the Linden dollars to your account simply cancel your Lindex Limit Sell transaction.    Being 20 points below your sale will simply “park”.

LL is a Money Service Business per their FinCen listing, so you will never see any legal bank within SL now.  

 

This sounds smart (if not against TOS)! So instead of giving away all my L$ when it accumulates, I should "park" it!

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22 minutes ago, Charlotte Bartlett said:

An alternative - You don’t need complicated alts etc and LL are still some away from 2FA.

if you want to “bank” Linden dollars simply do a limit sell on the Lindex 20 points below the best Sell rate. 

When you want to return the Linden dollars to your account simply cancel your Lindex Limit Sell transaction.    Being 20 points below your sale will simply “park”.

LL is a Money Service Business per their FinCen listing, so you will never see any legal bank within SL now.  

 

that is a very good idea, set it low enough that it should not sell/complete. its still tied to your account just not accessible until you cancel out the sale.

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21 minutes ago, Bree Giffen said:

Having an alt as a bank account works out very nicely as I've occasionally tried to buy a fatpack instead of a demo. It even stops me from making $1 demo purchases. 

but by having an alt and not letting everyone know who it is your being deceptive and untrustworthy and cheating.. oh my gerd!!!!!!! :P

Edited by Drakonadrgora Darkfold
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9 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

This sounds smart (if not against TOS)! So instead of giving away all my L$ when it accumulates, I should "park" it!

Where is it against the TOS to do a limit sale and cancel it?   If I have inadvertently missed a part of the TOS on this, please let me know - as I will update it!   Apologies.  I just read through and can't see to find this, is there a citation?    Many land barons have done this since the dawn of time.

That being said - in the spirit of the OP - Banking is never coming back to SL in any form by residents.   Linden Lab / Tilia are a Money Services Business as defined by FinCen and must adhere to US regulation.  

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On 6/18/2020 at 11:27 PM, Pipfrosch said:

Wandering around in SL I have seen many businesses that mimic the real world but I have yet to find a bank, I suspect an issue of trust exists with user run banks. So maybe this should be a feature of 2L itself?

An experienced user I am friends with on other social media warned me not to ever accept something from someone I do not know because sometimes they have scripts that steal linden's. I'm guessing even stores could sell products that do that (in my past I was a gray hat hacker until friends got arrested, we never stole anything but we liked to find vulnerabilities and trust is easy to exploit, such as trust a store is not a front)

Anyway what I want to do is budget for SL - say buying USD $50 a month whether I used that much previous month or not, and put excess into a bank that requires 2FA on my smart phone to withdraw if and when I need the Linden's for something more expensive than is in my balance.

Such a bank could even do fractional reserve lending but that isn't necessary, just a thought for how SL could monetize the feature. I hate capitalism but it does give motivation.

Anyway just thought I'd throw it out there and see if there are thoughts.

2FA doesn't have to be to a phone, could be e-mail with confirm link to account holder. But some means of letting me build up Lindens while minimizing risk of theft would be appreciated.

Banking was banned in SL as well it should be under US law after a number of scandals involving banks, ponzi schemes, even a stock market. Google the terms with "Second Life". People lost thousands of RL dollars. In my view, there was some unnecessary panic around it by some individuals who were only interesting in advancing their careers and selling their books -- when does a high investment account become a ponzi? The definitions weren't clear and the actions hard to trace. All of these were tied to gambling in SL which was also outlawed.

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