Instead of your money, Ginko offers “Ginko Perpetual Bonds”
Something about using a virtual bank never took hold with me as a resident in Second Life. It’s not that I didn’t think it was an intriguing idea, I just, somehow, resisted the temptation to use the service and add a Ginko terminal in front of my business in Second Life promoting use to customers. Instead, I’ve got an alt avatar that is used as my mattress for virtual cash. That’s worked but I’ve missed out on making any interest.
Now that Ginko has ceased banking operations, my gut feeling — virtual and real life — proved right in keeping the money on an ALT. I’m curious how many others in Second Life keep money in their alts like I’ve been doing since December 2005 (do you?).
Sadly, I’m not sure how many of the 18,000 Ginko accounts are getting out flush. A couple fellow VTOR authors uses Ginko and I hope they were able to get their funds out in time. Doesn’t sound like Evansmom was able to from her recent post 
It’s not something to be happy about when anybody loses their money.
All hope may not completely be lost for those with funds left in Ginko Financial.
[Ginko] would issue what it called a “Ginko Perpetual Bonds,” a security on the World Stock Exchange, in an attempt to compensate depositors. “Customers will receive one bond with a face value of L$1 for every L$1 they have deposited in Ginko Financial,” said Chief Executive Nicholas Portocarrero (real life: Andre Sanchez of San Paolo, Brazil) in a statement. “Each Ginko Perpetual Bond will yield L$0.03 or 3% of face value per quarter.”
Has this had any impact on the Linden dollar? Nope. Still hanging around $265-270 per $1 USD.
Pictured above is what the official Ginko office in-world (Ginko 222,211,27) looked like when writing this post today. In the lobby there were a couple of people talking about the situation. I didn’t ask for quotes, but the mood of the chat was somber at best.
Perhaps it’s just me, but I’m getting that vibe around SL everywhere lately.
August 9th, 2007 • 
TD Goodliffe • 
comment | August 9, 2007 at 16:48 | individual comment-link
I used to keep some funds in Ginko, just enough so I would never have to buy lindens when I needed some, but it was still a sizable sum. I stopped doing that several months ago when the owner of a bank in another virtual game walked away with all of the deposits.
comment | August 9, 2007 at 18:57 | individual comment-link
Ginko is a giant Ponzi scheme. That being said, I’m not sure why you’d be keeping money on an Alt?
I’ve done this in other games where there are limits to inventory, etc. But I’m a little puzzled about the benefit in SL.
comment | August 10, 2007 at 07:51 | individual comment-link
Hal9k — reason I keep money in an alt is that it’s not tied to any scripts in world. My primary avatar is and I didn’t want some sort of problem/hack to drain all my money