By Guardian Market, SLR CFO

 Metaverse Investment Fund (MIF) manager Shaun Altman hopes to bring a “whole new era in virtual world finance.”  The MIF had its first meeting at its headquarters in Theta at 9pm SLT on Friday.

The MIF makes some big promises in a world of investment uncertainty.  Linden Lab’s banking ban brought nothing less than panic to the marketplace, and the SL Capital Exchange’s investigation of the Sky Power Fund (CAPEX:POW) has brought doubt to resident-run funds.  However, the MIF’s website promises complete liquidity within 72 hours if necessary, regardless of amount of money invested.  That challenge, combined with the usual promises of transparency and honesty, give the MIF a lot to live up to in the coming months. 

The MIF functions as an arbitrage fund, although Altman has been tight-lipped about what types of arbitrage investments MIF is participating in.  The website shares some insights as to what can be excluded from MIF’s realm of investments, however: “We don't invest with any banks, stock exchanges or any other financial service offered up by a resident within Second Life.”  And while the fund promises to do its best and hopes for sustained high-yield, it makes no promises about returns to investors, thus shielding it from the banking ban.

Investors are certainly taking notice, as well.  According to the February 1, 2008 Financial Report , the fund is now boasting nearly 630,000 in its first week of operations.  "I'm pleasd to report to you tonight that the community has heard our message LOUD and CLEAR," said Altman during the shareholder meeting, "This is an AMAZING first week for the Metaverse Investment Fund, and we can't thank you enough for your support of our vision!"

With all the recent events that have occurred in the Second Life financial sector, SL Reports brings you another twist. Ever wanted to own a piece of history? Well if so here is your chance.... Ginko Financial is having an auction, you could be the proud owner of a piece of hardware that was once the main server of Ginko. Ginko is holding the auction on ebay. Will the money be used to refund some creditors, or is this Ginko's last way to cash in.....you be the judge.

Posted from Ginko Website:

As expected, the $10,000 of capital injection into our Paypal account did not last more than 2 days.  Hopefully, the funds were distributed to those that needed them first.  There have been individuals who notified us that Paypal was not an option for them, and that they would prefer to withdraw their funds in-world.  We will now move forward to bringing in more Linden Dollars into our reserve.  Our target goal will be to bring our Linden reserve up to 4M before opening up the ATM for withdrawals.  We expect this to take approximately 2-3 weeks from today.  We wish that we could move faster to do this, but unfortunately, it takes time to liquidate investments and be able to purchase the large quantity of L$ without incurring significant loss.  Our rough target date for opening our ATMs for withdrawal is around Feb. 1.

At the peak of our business before the announcement of LL’s new policy, we were approaching 100M in deposits.  So far, we have been able to work our liabilities down to approximately 67M in deposits.  We do feel that this is a significant achievement given the short notice.  However, we are only one-third of the way there, and expect that it will take an additional 1-2 months to completely stabilize our business to the point that we can remove the withdrawal limits.  Hopefully, the next 2-3 weeks will show more progress than the last two weeks.