The Alphaville Herald

MMO Project Entropia to Get Banking License

Real life banking license for spacebux?
by Idoru Wellman, staff writer
Project Entropia has long been known as a hype machine rivaled only by Second Life, and it has also been known as a de facto online virtual casino. Now, according to Ars Technica, it is applying for a banking license – as in a legitimate banking [...]

LL Playing Gotcha With Land Baron?

IntLibber Brautigan's frozen accounts can’t sell L$ to pay bills
by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk
 A surprising note appeared on the Ancapistan Capital Exchange website tuesday evening – accord to the press release, IntLibber Brautigan’s virtual land business is having some difficulty covering land tier payments to Linden Lab due to the Lab’s L$ spacebux currency [...]

Lab Tries to Hide SL Downturn in 3rd Quarter Economic Report

Pay no attention to the player hours logged in September

by Jessica Holyoke
Fresh out of the Herald’s Money office, (unfortunately located right next to Jimbo’s) is the 2008 Quarter 3 Herald financial report.  The compilation of this particular report was a bit harder to compile as a key piece of data was missing.  Zee Linden reported how [...]

World Stock Exchange Open for Business-mostly

by Jessica Holyoke

The World Stock Exchange, WSE, is back up and running.  A few new things have been added since the Exchange went down for updates in January.  WSE 4.0 is active on www.wselive.com.  After the updates, all balances are now in WIC’s or World Internet Currency.  People who opened an account prior to August [...]

State of the Economy

Lowest profit per capita growth ever in Q1 2008
by Jessica Holyoke
Zee Linden recently posted graphs reflecting the strength of the SL Economy here – and Zee is very happy to report that the SL Economy grew by 15%. However, the story is not that simple. By several other measures, the economy growing slowly if at [...]

WSE Swaps Fictional Currencies, Might Be Trading In March

Roleplaying CEO’s pretend stock market still down after 51 days
by Jessica Holyoke
Who wants Kool-Aid?
LukeConnell Vandeverre of Hope Capital Ltd, made an announcement via video link outside of Second Life on Sunday about the status of the World Stock Exchange. (WSE). The WSE went dark fifty one days ago with an announcement that they would be [...]

BCX Withstands Fraud Attack

BCX CEO claims Spinchief Akina, iblack Afarensis, chyk2u Arado, and Petrucci Jonson are thieves – thanks Linden Lab for assistance
by Jessica Holyoke
Travis Ristow
Travis Ristow, CEO of BCX Holdings (traded on the International Stock Exchange) send the letter below to BCX account holders and shareholders today. In the letter, Mr. Ristow alleges that Spinchief Akina attempted [...]

Second Life Economy is in a Recession

Residents with a positive monthly L$ cash flow declines for second consecutive quarter
by Jessica Holyoke
After the banking ban, there are commentators who state that the Second Life Economy is in a recession and then there are the opposing commentators that say that the Second Life Economy is not in a recession. 
According to Wikipedia, [...]

Financial News Update

by Jessica Holyoke

A week after the announcement of the upcoming Linden Banking Ban, Lindens and residents are reacting in different ways.  The Linden reaction is that "payment of interest", the main prohibition on offering a bank goes both ways.  Paying interest on deposits is prohibited, but according to some Lindens that responded in writing, receiving [...]

WSE Down – But Coming Back

step 3: Close virtual stock exchange for 30 days. step 4: Directors resign. step 5: Profit?
by Jessica Holyoke
LukeConnell Vandeverre has plans for WSE
Upon entering the World Stock Exchange, visitors are greeted with a notice that the ATM’s and assorted systems will be down for up to 30 days.  After two trading days of 3.8 million [...]