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Could a Gaian Bank work?

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RoboT-800

PostPosted: Sat Dec 03, 2005 6:32 pm


A while ago I saw a bank that's now pretty well closed. It had people who putmoney in, but nobody took a loan out. The owner, because there wasn't any safe gaurd against scamming, couldn't loan out a lot at a time and so it failed. Also, there isn't really any point of a loan for most Gaians.

When vending, investing, and the such, often times you get strapped for cash. You have so much stuff in the stuff you're trying to sell through the vend and your mules that you only have 10-20K, hardly enough to vend properly. (I know that most try to make their items so low under the next price that they sell almost instantly, but there are still times when you just need cash. Espcialy for me and my poorness. xd ).

Instead of trying to give people loans, if a bank insted focussed on investing the money, there could be a profit to be made.

Here's the breakdown:
"Stock" is issued to investors to pay for items needed. I.E. outfits for the banks mules (Togive the bank the look of lagitimacy.), and possibly a guild for the bank.

People put money in the bank.

Every month the bank gives 10% on savings invested in the bank.

The bank then uses the money invested in the bank to make money by vending or investing.

The bank keeps 20% of money invested in the bank on hand, to gaurd against runs on the bank.

At the end of the month, the accountant for the bank calculates how much each of the savings accounts has in them.

Bank statements are posted so people can see how much they have in the bank.

The accountant then figures the total worth of the assets of the bank.

A net revinue for the month is then calculated, and a portion of that is paid out to investors, and some is kept to increase revinue.


Obviously one of the major drwbacks is that this is a huge proposition in terms of the amount of time needed everymonth. Keeping the the bank running (Keeping track of depisits and withdrawls) would be hard enough. Keeping the bank profitable would be another undertaking on top of that. What are your guy's thoughts, suggestions and theories?
PostPosted: Sun Dec 04, 2005 5:45 am


i dont like it i like the way i do things now blaugh

Innocentblackshadow


tamcharles

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PostPosted: Mon Dec 05, 2005 10:39 am


I personally can't see it taking flight, unless of course the admins run it. There are trust issues and more importantly, it requires investors to vend/exchange/invest other peoples money for a bit of commission. Most of whom that are capable of this (and can make a worthy profit) would rather do it for themselves (as they already have the capital).

Basically the take home message is my opinion that, "everyone should do their own homework." confused And our Gaian society is stratified for a reason. sweatdrop
PostPosted: Mon Dec 05, 2005 7:02 pm


tamcharles
I personally can't see it taking flight, unless of course the admins run it. There are trust issues and more importantly, it requires investors to vend/exchange/invest other peoples money for a bit of commission. Most of whom that are capable of this (and can make a worthy profit) would rather do it for themselves (as they already have the capital).

Basically the take home message is my opinion that, "everyone should do their own homework." confused And our Gaian society is stratified for a reason. sweatdrop

xd yeah, true. True. Poor people who bump/poll for gold. In my theories I figured that trust would be a large issue, as most people who work for their gold would hate to see it sudenly all be gone through scamming. However, if you look at the first attempt at a Gaian Bank:
http://www.gaiaonline.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6596886
(It failed.)

You see a couple things. Frist, the rules are really bad. There's a cap on how much you can deposit, the rules are confusing, and you can lose your money if you forget about it. On top of that, loans won't workk unless there is a way to garentee againt scamming, which is probably not going to happen. The next thing that is apparent is that is is newbies that are depositing money, which means that is the newbie engine that would be using the bank, which means (generaly) that they would be mainly depositing gold untill thety've saved up quite a bit and they can afford whatever item they were saving up for. Also, it means that they can be drawn by interest and compelled a bit more not to withdraw gold.

Most of the people who will read this consider 3K quite incosiquential, but there's a post in BSOP saying, "OMG! 3K!?!", which suggests that that person would be rather excited to get 500 a month on a 5K investment, especialy if it meant that they wouldn't have to do any work for it. I recently did a poll in BSOP (Big Suites of Polls, second largest guild) and most people answering had 1-10K. The previous Bank did very little to appeal to the masses, and so it didn't get very many deposits. Also, because it had a limit on the size of the deposit, it wasn't able to get large amounts of cash, which would be helpful if you were going to use the Bank like a hedge fund.

That's, I think, a pretty important idea in this theory. Even though the objective would be to make money by buying and selling like a mutual fund, unlike a mutual fund, if even though the bank was making a profit, the profit would not be tied to the amount given out. The bank could double its money and it would still only pay out 10%. It would be as if the bank was giving the people a commision for the ability to use their money.

The point about the hiring investors is well taken. That's easily the biggest obstical to a bank being viable. The only idea I can think of to get around it would be for there to be different jobs, an accountant, and a person in charge of investments. There could probably be only one investor, as more than one might start fighting and bickering and embezling and quiting as they don't have much of a stake in the bank. other than limiting the Bank to only one investor, there doesn't seem to be much of a way around that.

RoboT-800


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PostPosted: Sun Dec 11, 2005 3:02 pm


Reminds me too much of Neopets.
PostPosted: Wed Dec 14, 2005 3:32 pm


Too many things could go wrong, there'd be no safeguard against scamming.

Mylian

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