Second Life closes banks

18th January 2008

All banks operating in the gambling world of Second Life will be closed since January, 22. The creator of the online virtual universe, the company Linden Labs officially stated that virtual banks perform financial transactions without the necessary registration in the real world. This, as the developers explain, does great harm to the gambling economy and the depositors as well. As it is known, the possibility of exchanging the local currency - Linden-dollars - for real money attracted a great number of fans to the project, and contributed to the development of commerce within it.
The company is afraid of a repetition of the story with one of the largest gambling banks Ginko Financial, broken in 2007. Due to its closure the players lost about 700 thousand dollars. Banks offer unreasonably high interest rates, and as a result, investors get nothing. Thus, the gamble economy gets more destabilized economy.
Now only those companies are permitted to deal with money in Second Life, that have a registration statement or other document issued by government regulators - in fact, the only Linden Labs itself so far.