Recently, an anonymous financial consultant has made some claims regarding Second Life’s “so-called” economy. This is more than conjecture apparently, as an associate of his decided to invest 10 000 USD in an opportunity they discovered on July 2006 after doing some research and seeing SL being reported on in many popular financial/business magazines.
Apparently they discovered that yes you can increase the amount of SLL (the currency of Second Life) quite easily by making deposits in Second Life banks for an attractive percentage of interest.
Everything was going fine until they actually tried to extract the gains they had made. If you can actually get your money back out of the bank (which is sometimes easier said than done, often banks disappear over-night or simply refuse to honor any agreements made with no explanation or compensation.
However, provided you can get your money out of the bank…another more serious problem arises. Essentially the SSL to USD exchange rate is controlled by the top players who own the majority of the wealth in Second Life. (Linden Labs’ own currency exchange market is nothing more than an open currency market…not a spot exchange so it is impractical for moving large amounts of SSL to USD)
They discovered that if they tried to remove more than a couple thousand dollars USD from Second Life, the currency exchange rate fluctuated to provide them with net return rates of about 4%, the prevailing dollar deposit rate at the time.
Their conclusion: Second Life is nothing more than a giant pyramid scheme, where the marks are brought in and convinced to invest in the so-called economy, and they in-turn entice more individuals to invest while the only people really getting rich are those at the top.
Ultimately, “What you’re left with is lots of people putting USD in, and a small group taking those USD out, leaving the rest with no financial claims on anything - just an imaginatively sexy avatar.”
