Ginko Financial Selling Server on eBay
January 21st, 2008 by Benjamin Duranske
According to the official site, Second Life’s Ginko Financial is selling a Xeon 5160 server on eBay. So far, no one has met the opening bid of $3200.
Ginko Financial was a self-styled Second Life bank that collapsed last summer. It owed depositors approximately US $750,000 when it closed its doors. Ginko’s collapse is widely seen as the chief motivation for Second Life banning all unlicensed banks earlier this month. Many, VB’s editor included, were convinced Ginko was insolvent from its inception. For more, see VB’s archived coverage.
The auction is listed by an eBay user with the name “Hinoserm.” A former Ginko employee blogs under that name here. The server represents a significant Ginko asset, and one suspects that victims (including Second Life’s ‘Shaun Altman,’ who is attempting to collect, inventory, and equitably distribute what remains of Ginko’s assets) may be interested in this development.
Perhaps more importantly, the hard drives likely contain a wealth of valuable information that could help depositors collect significantly more of what they are owed. The listing says the drives will be wiped, but a note that has been on the Ginko website for months says that “an archive of Ginko Financial’s database will be kept indefinately [sic] for historical purposes.” There have been rumors of a potential lawsuit since Ginko’s demise; attorneys and depositors considering that route may want to spend some time considering the implications of this auction and weighing their options.
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5 Responses to “Ginko Financial Selling Server on eBay”
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This is the server that was used by Ginko – but it was rented from Hino, The owner of GinkoSoft who ran the servers for Ginko Financial. This server is one of a couple owned by Hino and freinds for the use by GinkoSoft ‘employees’ (freinds of Hino) and we regularly use the others for gaming (GarrysMod is too cool), ventrillo, system backups and anything else Hino decides they should be used for (you dont ask for access, he grants it).
Most of us did the grunt work for free, and kept our money earnt elseware in Ginko Financial aswell, lots of members (Hino included) lost their money in the crash, causing some of the group to leave Second Life. Even though we knew what was happening, we KEPT our money in Ginko, because we know this wasnt a ponzi or any other sort of scheme – it was a bank, and we we’re in a bank run – we hoped the run would stop. (for more info about credit crisis’s see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Rock)
The crash hit all of us hard, and Hino was forced to sell one of his islands (Ginko Valley) to help with personal bills (i myself has had to rent my personal island out to help recoup some Lindens), the server (which was given the nickname Taurine i believe – servers were named after stimulants found on the back of energy drinks used while upgrading between servers) is Hino’s property though – he hasnt told us why he is selling this server not any others, but i beleive its due to resentment against what happened in GF, and bills are still needing to be paid.
Ginko Technologies (GinkoSoft) is still up and running inworld, currently running 2 islands for rent (Ginko and Ginko Hills) – these sims, the servers and even us staff we’re NEVER owned by Ginko Financial, some of the group not even working for Financial at all when it was in buisness. We are dishearting to hear that Nicolaus has pulled out of his promise to WSE but with the amount of people grabbing at him and the ease he could disapear into the neither regions of the internet we understand why.
I would like to see my L$220,000ish returned aswell, but i accept that it may never happen.
My name is Craig Solzhenitsyn, i am proud to still keep my Ginko Technologies tag above my head inworld because i am a freind of Hinoserm, but for Ginko Financial stuff please find Nicolaus Portacallo.
Craig’s comment is pretty much spot-on correct, although this server is/was named Selenium (it is the direct replacement for Taurine though, so good job).
As to why I’ve decided to sell it; it isn’t doing anything for me but use electricity. It was configured and built solely for Ginko Financial’s services, and hasn’t actually been running them since GF’s collapse.
All of that data and the few remaining GF services which are still running are existing on a different machine — Sorbitol — and in fact have been since late August/early September.
Thus, concerns regarding the hard disks in the server listed for sale are somewhat invalid. It has not stored any of Ginko Financial’s data in months — the drives that were originally in the server when it was tasked with operating Ginko Financial have already been erased several times since then.
The data itself is kept in protected storage, on and off-site, for my own personal reference.
-Hinoserm
As always, I appreciate you guys stopping by and commenting. You both have been consistently open about the situation with Ginko, and I don’t have any real doubt you are now. That said, I’m not sure how a court would view this asset if somebody tried to stop the sale though, since the “rent” Ginko paid could be said to have bought it, but I doubt anyone will try. Anyway, I’m happy to hear that you are preserving the data. That’s the right thing to do here.
“Even though we knew what was happening, we KEPT our money in Ginko, because we know this wasnt a ponzi or any other sort of scheme – it was a bank, and we we’re in a bank run – we hoped the run would stop. (for more info about credit crisis’s see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Rock)”
Ginko was never a bank. Banks cannot exist in a world with near infinite counterparty risk, no case law let alone arbitration. For that matter it wasnt a fund. It was a bunch of devices that allowed you to give your money to someone with the idea that maybe someday you will get it back, with interest.
Anyway, what ever Ginko was, it was insolvent. At the end, it was paying withdrawls with new deposits, and thus was de facto a ponzi scheme, regardless of the creator’s original intentions.
Thank you for leaving your money in though- and I dont mean that facetously. It allowed some of those who were caught unaware to get out and probably saved some depositors from fiscal ruin.
By the way, your metaphor to the current credit crisis is more apt than you know. This crisis isnt a liquidity problem- its a solvency problem. Citi, Morgan, Merril et al are not going to sovereign wealth funds to raise liquidity- that they can get from the discount window at the fed. They need money they dont have to pay back.
Sorry…Merrill. You would think I would know how to spell it since I used to work there.