The Drama from italy continues.

I've no longer access to their website, login no longer functions.. but this is the google translated text of their new main page:

###################################################################

Consequently, the occurrence of unexpected situations and not plannable, we absolutely unintended and therefore independent of our intentions BISL temporarily suspending its activities. The over-mentioned reasons relate in particular the priority by our staff to solve the problems posed to us by Linden Lab's own initiative and arbitrarily proceeded to withdraw large amounts of Linden dollars by our avatar claiming justification at all matching truth, specifically purchases NEVER occurred lindens through online auction sites. This has been added to the suspension of some of our avatar from Second Life therefore now unusable because, we believe, reports of a third party. Pending resolve the incident Bisl will resistuzione manual part of the sum from us in committing deposit within a reasonable time, in case the problems with LL were extremely long, to move closer to 100% of the total hoping that Linden Lab allows us, if, to use our people at least to sell the land we owned. All this with the will to demonstrate once again our good faith even with the awareness not to be forced also, and above all according to what is expressed in, and used "notecard" present in our ATM at the acceptance of our services, Notecard here for completeness of information included in his "General": GENERAL • Bank of Italy SL allows users of Second Life to open current accounts with a daily interest that can earn on their savings rather than leave them to stop lying in their account. Bank of Italy SL takes the total deposit and reinveste or to various entities and persons in order to obtain the needed to pay interest daily. We always keep a reserve exist in "linden dollars" to allow customers to withdraw from their accounts most often instantly, sometimes after a few minutes per hour. We must clearly underscore that, as a result of interest payments per day, the Bank of Italy SL has the absolute need to capitalize on the "money" deposited. By virtue of the above, therefore, we can not guarantee that payments will be made in quickly, it being our absolute commitment to pursuing this goal. This type of activity is obviously subject to obvious risk. Those accounts are not insured in any way by any government, as in the case of many current accounts in real life, as we can not guarantee not to ever go into a bank route. Certainly Bank of Italy SL does not want this and we will strive to ensure an always solid and reliable, but is fair and honest to be aware of the risks described above. We apologize for any inconvenience hoping in more quickly as possible to resume our activities. Bisl Staff

##################################################################

Unedited. Looks like my decision to contact Linden Labs regarding the vulnerability lead to some more research on the part of the Lab into how this institution operated with unexpected results. I don't know who's telling the truth, so I'm not going to step into the conflict as a banner carrier for the Lab or for Banca D Italia. What I will say is that extremely high returns on interest have to come from somewhere and usually it's not entirely legitimate.

New Blog Functionality! Index Charts.

This is just a thread to allow my visitors to sound off on their thoughts of the appearances of the Indices on this blog. I'm trying to find a DSE index, but have had no luck yet. Also if you have any other comments on the appearance or the structure of the blog that you'd like to voice an opinion on, feel free to do so. I'm always out to improve this interface for the general SL Finance market and am trying to make as many resources available as possible without introducing an excess of clutter.

LL moves to save LNL? LL waking up finally? VSTEX growth rate dangerous? WSE wising up?

I had to write about this, because if it's true.. and I stress the if, then it's the best news ever to hit Second Life financial sectors. Lindsay Druart, CEO of LNL, has claimed that all of the funds lost in the banking heist incident has been recovered through Linden Labs (LL).. that the bank has in fact been compensated for the massive hack/fraud attempt.

If this is true it would be the first time I've ever heard of Linden Labs stepping in to help any player involving third party software recover funds due to an abuse or an exploit, particularly on this scale. It makes me wonder why when so many of the other banks have gone down in the past due to similar issues, they had not stepped in. It also is such good news that my speculative nature makes me have to second guess my trust of the claimant, again. I wish there was a direct method of verifying the claim as if so I'm sure a substantiated proof of this would radically impact the Second Life markets in a positive manner. In the past, investors large or small had absolutely no recourse when something went horribly wrong.

That said, I've not noticed significant market activity, that couldn't be associated with insiders on any issue on CAPEX or any other exchange this week. It's actually been rather slow. That said, I'm anticipating business as usual as the holidays approach baring new product ideas or new news. On the other hand VSTEX has seen a flurry of new offers that makes me wonder if the community standards protocols are going to be effective in preventing fraud on that exchange.

When I headed an exchange as AVIX's operations officer, I found that 90% of all proposals were either bad, or fraudulent in nature. Even the ones that passed the screening, of them, 1 went bad.. and there were about 8 other corps that made it through the screening. The bad one was CYB, which is no longer listed on CAPEX. I've been accused in the past of granting bias for the CEO of CYB because their avatar was a dragon lady, which is ridiculous.. given I'm married and that'd be the same premise as granting favors to someone else who is also the same rl ethnicity, especially when the person behind the PC happens to be a male it makes the premise even more rediculous. I knew quite a bit about that CEO, but the parties who make the accusations have no idea of the levels of precaution I took to attempt to protect the investors of the old AVIX exchange. My interrogations tended to be rigorous. I required a method of RL identification. Even Lindsay Druart herself was verified by me at one point, although I questioned her twin exchange listings on WSE and CAPEX. I verified her by tracing her internet account back to its listing source using WHOIS.net functionalities and checking her domain's ownership on several of her internet sites. Some of it can be faked, but it really depends on the ISP and how they do their listings. I no longer trust GoDaddy, anyone can get an account there it seems regardless of proof of identity. I kept my methods secret at the time because I didn't want a potential fraudster to have the opportunity to prepare themselves for interrogation and the best remote background search I could sustain. I never got more adventurous than remote verification because I've always been concerned that anything more may actually be a breach in Linden Labs privacy policy/terms of service and that would end my short career in second life finance.

With that tangent done, back to my point, any exchange witnessing explosive growth will more than likely experience higher than comparative rates of fraud for more cautious exchanges. This has proven true in the WSE/CAPEX comparison. WSE has delisted many companies that have failed or proven fraudulent enterprises.. you just wouldn't be able to tell it because delisting usually means a complete wipe of all history of that corporation's existence. Their monthly rate of delisting has also been higher over the course of history. I'm expecting their rates to fall though. The criteria used on WSE seems to be tightening and I'm hoping that will result in improved performance, especially in the area of fraud deterrence.

Banca D Italia has not paid interest on my account since 11/20/2007, the date I isolated their programming issue. I'm very concerned someone got to them first as, why else would the interest accumulation halt? Thus far withdrawing and depositing has not been effected, but this activity is strange and so far messaging to them via their website and IMs has gone without a response. The day I reported the issue, the owner of the bank said they should be able to isolate any strange transactions and the programming problems with the atm were fixed as far as I could tell. I'm hoping they've not mistakenly pegged their savior's account as an aggressor in their search to isolate any questionable transactions, that'd be a real pity if such ingratitude were mistakenly displayed. I'd hate to have to stop using their bank, the fund's money must work.