Looking Back: The Podex Exchange

By Bixyl Shuftan

Over time, the Second Life Newser has had a number of sponsors. Farshore Radio and Lorena Chung have been with us for a few years, and more recently Montecito Bay and the CDS. But our first and longest lasting one was the Podex Exchange. Sometimes called the Podex Bank in it's first days, they were a virtual currency exchange service, exchanging Linden dollars with US dollars and other real-life currencies such as British Pounds, Euros, Japanese Yen, and others. Early on, one could both buy and sell. As they were faster than Linden Lab's Lindex, many who used Second Life as a source of real-life income saw Podex as a good alternative as the official Linden exchange service could take days to complete a transaction of Lindens for real money.

The owner of Podex, Jacek Shuftan, approached me in Fall 2010. Although the Newser had done an number of advertisements since it's founding a few months earlier, it had yet to find a cash sponsor. Jacek had done business with our predecessor, the Second Life Newspaper, and hearing about us was interested in this higher level of advertising. The deal was done, and their banner soon appeared on the Newser's front page near the top just underneath the banner for the Sunweaver Estates, which was our land sponsor.

Soon after that, we had a short article about them on November 30, describing who they were. In January 2012, we interviewed Jacek about buying Linden dollars from Podex. “We can describe buying Lindens and the risk with it as a pyramid,” Jacek commented, one with levels of safety, “At the top is Linden Lab, there is no risk buying from them. The next level are third-party exchanges. They are usually registered real-life companies with real-life addresses and telephone numbers, operating on the market. There is a tiny risk as they are not Linden Lab and not as large as they. However, most do not have prices as competitive as Linden Lab." Podex was competitive with it's prices, and had more options in what real life currencies to use and how to make the payments, such as credit the payments, such as credit cards and Paypall.

“Finances are not the sexiest part of Second Life,” Jacek once admitted. And after the first couple articles, I wondered how I could write more about him as I was interested in doing some free adverts for him as a bonus. Then I had an idea: do a fictional story as a commercial of a satisfied client. So on February 2011 came the first of our fun adverts. For the one next month, I had the idea of a dumb bank robber who failed hilariously and it turned out there was no chance of success even if he was competent. I went ahead and asked Jacek ahead of time, and he told he to go for it. And that would be the first of many of the misadventures of "Clumsy Cooper" as the raccoon bandit came to be known. Later on, Jacek would do a "Bank Robbery" video of his own.

So for a few years, my "Polish Cousin," as he called himself as we had the same Second Life surname, continued to do business with us. In April 2013, they moved their inworld location from Moonburry to Coda. But also in April 2013, the US Treasury Department published a paper about guidelines for the regulation of virtual currencies. Jacek thought it was potentially good as "if (Linden dollars) were virtual currency, it would be more trustworthy, and (Second Life) will have more investors."

But instead the following month, Linden Lab announced the biggest change in Second Life's economy since the ban on gambling: third-party Linden exchange services were no longer authorized. Jacek called it a "Really strange move of LL. … I really do not understand (their) motives." He tried to keep Podex open and tried to contact the Lab to talk to them. But instead they suspended his accounts and by doing so shut Podex down. But thanks to an outcry of the residents, some whom were saying they couldn't use the official Lindex and were talking about leaving Second Life for other grids, Linden Lab did a partial backdown. Third-party Linden exchangers could operate, but they had to register with the Lab, and could only sell Linden dollars. Linden Lab would insist on a monopoly of buying Linden dollars for real money. This was satisfactory for most residents, though a couple people from outside the United States would complain to me they couldn't use the Lindex and had a pile of Linden dollars they could no longer sell for their country's cash. Linden Lab would not authorize Podex to resume operations for almost three weeks after it reauthorized others, possibly because they saw his wanting to talk instead of shutting down right away as defiance.

Despite it's rough treatment by Linden Lab, Podex resumed business as a top Linden exchanger, and even hosted an art gallery in it's new building. The commercial articles featuring satisfied customers and more of the misadventures of "Clumsy Cooper" resumed. All went well for a couple more years. Then out of the blue, Linden Lab announced in June 2015 that as of August 1, they would no longer allow third-party Linden exchangers to operate, claiming improvements to the Lindex were satisfactory of the needs of "the vast majority of Second Life users." While some residents were highly critical of this, "it smacks of bullying for LL to usurp those income streams by fiat." Jacek remained hopeful at first,  "Linden Lab is not stable in it's decisions, as history taught us before, so I do hope that their decision would be changed in the future, as it happened before with 3rd party resellers closure." He was quoted as saying, "the Lab is only shooting itself in the foot ... Payment methods wich they offer are not accessible in many countries, so they will not only lose profit but also their best clients who invest real money in (the) grid, and now will not be able to do it."

Despite a petition to the Lab for them to change their mind, Linden Lab stubbornly stuck to it's decision. Then in late July 2015, a few days before the Aug 1 deadline, Podex closed operations in Second Life. On their website, they used the words "temporarily suspend," suggesting they were holding out hope. I would check by the office building in Coda every so often. When I dropped by on November 1, 2015, the office itself was gone. After five years, our first and longest-lasting sponsor was gone from Second Life. "Clumsy Cooper" would make one more appearance at the end of the month in the last of the fictional articles about Podex.

While the loss of Second Life as a market for Podex was bad, it wasn't fatal. Starting with the InWorldz grid in 2014, they had been moving to a number of smaller virtual worlds. Today, they boast services in over two dozen. While there is no doubt they don't make as much money as before, they are still around. Just outside Second Life.

The closing of our longest-lasting sponsor was bad, but for the Newser, it's misfortune was compounded by the closing of our other longtime sponsor at the time: Steelhead. Although it's owner then, TotalLunar Eclipse, had a number of real life troubles, it was Linden Lab locking out his account in a dispute that pushed him into making that decision. 2015 would see other questionable moves by LInden Lab, such as locking the account of Flea Bussy and almost closing Grendel's Children, one of Second Life's best known malls, if not the best known. And then there was the closing of the SS Galaxy, the largest build on the Grid, that had been doing well until hit with a series of griefing attacks that the Lab was little help with. It was, from my point of view, "The Year of the Linden Screw-Up."

Eventually, the Newser would weather the storm and get more sponsors, Farshore Radio, Lorena Chung, Montecito Bay, and the Confederation of Democratic Simulators. But we never have forgotten our first, and so far our longest running cash sponsor.

Bixyl Shuftan

SLN Archives: BNT Bankrupt 53 Sims Offline ( October 2009)

Original article by Dana Vanmoer,
Additional comments by Bixyl Shuftan

In the history of Second Life Newspaper, one of our major sponsors for a time was BNT holdings, held by an Intilibber Brautigan. He could be a little opinionated at times, once remarking (not an exact quote) "Second Life's furries should stop yiffing and start actually building things." As a defender of Woodbury University, infamous for having a reputation as a griefer hangout, he raised more than a few eyebrows. But his business seemed to be doing well, and his sponsorship bennefited us for a time, Second Life Newspaper getting a huge space for an office, a quarter sim, of which a three story brick and mortar building was built on. James and Dana also got their own private island, on which we had a few parties on, notably our second anniversary bashes. Then in mid-October, there was trouble, major trouble. We couldn't get to our office, Dana couldn't get to her island. Dana soon found out the reason: without warning our sponsor had defaulted on the sim payments.

October 19, 2009
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A couple of days ago I got a message to say my sim was offline, ok these things happen so I didn't worry too much, next day I logged in to find 'Your location is unavailable you have been moved to a nearby area'.

OK whats going on???

I went to the office and looked at the map about 1/2 of BNTs sims were gone - including my island WTF!!!????

Scrolling through past notices I found one in the Brautigan and Tuck holdings group:

BnT Holdings started with one man and his dream. A dream of building a virtual free state where the residents could proudly call Ancapistan home. Unfortunately even the world's greatest empires have endured hard times. These times are no exception. Due to the current economic status of the world and Second Life, it has become increasingly difficult to sustain 50 sims. BNT Holdings will continue to exist, but we must take one step back in order to take two steps forward. If you wish to remain a part of our family at BNT, we will be happy to relocate you to our original estate in the Surreal BT sims. Thank you for being a loyal part of BNT. Here's to a bright future.



No warning, no notice, nothing just gone.

Next - will we lose the office? Our 1/4 sim on BNT land the answer came the next day when that too disappeared. In this time I had spoken to Duchess Shepard who helped me get the sim back online for 24 hours so I could empty it. The loss of this and all our hard work on Fairyteller was devastating.

Duchess also knew nothing about this until it happened, despite the anger being directed towards her she is doing what she can to help people for which I commend her as many in her position (and some who are) don't log in or hide behind alts.

Many notes followed which I wont repeat here. I asked Intlibber for an official statement that I received this morning, which to be honest, I am not going to publish in full simply because its an out-pouring of spite and blame on others (named) none of which actually answers the questions, the rest you can read here:

"Three years ago, I launched BNT with the dream of building a real life sustainable business that could pay a real world income for myself and staff. Those were heady days when land sold reliably for 12 L$ per square meter and one could double their holdings in a few months. I built some of the iconic buildings of the SL business community, and was featured from almost our first week in business in major SL and RL media for our projects. We grew from a half sim in October 2006 to 53 sims this summer, doing so organically from sales, and capital raised via inworld markets. We had begun the transition to becoming a major developer a few times, the first time stymied by sabotage by the largest competitor, and most recently by a smaller competitor with a big obnoxious mouth."

"At the same time, it appears that the real life economy is taking much longer to recover than we had expected earlier in the year. The disposable incomes of SL users continues to erode in RL and SL, causing some of our long standing tenants to give up their land. We have also seen a systemic failure by our shareholders to follow sage investment advice to rent BNT land rather than land in other estates, in order to support their investment in BNT.

Unlike many in SL, we do not subsidize our SL business with real life income. BNT always operated on a sustainable basis on its own organic inworld growth and cash flow and was not a 'hobby' or 'game' like we see so many in the land business who do not operate with common sense business models and who undercut the market with cost-based prices.

As a result of these pressures, this past month we fell into an unrecoverable condition. We had been expecting additional income from development projects but those have not come to fruition in time to even out our cash flow. We do not expect the real world economy to recover sufficiently in the next 6 months to improve the land business, and we have made the decision to get out of the land business almost entirely.

As a result of a sudden severe drop in income, Linden Lab seized our sims on the 16th of this month. We have negotiated with them to reopen the sims temporarily so tenants may recover their property.

We are working to raise capital to recover them so we may sell them off and to pay off existing tenants tier. Once we accomplish this, we will focus solely on the content, finance, and education businesses. Our work with Woodbury University is poised to take off with major student body involvement in SL.

Unfortunately, the 10 sims we have with Surreal are also under attack from the admins there. Despite being paid up on tier with Surreal, and despite having reached an agreement with their staff about our continued operation there, they have seized our sims and banned our staff from serving our customers. Despite public claims by Deuce Marjeta, we have kept tier paid up to date on our Surreal BT sims and his actions we consider criminal theft. Despite his claims to the contrary, we do NOT endorse our residents moving to Surreal, as he reneged on our earlier agreement."

Many are angry at tier paid in advance and lost, from what I have heard Mr Brautigan is trying to arrange the sale of the now defunct sims in order to pay the debts owed - we shall just have to wait and see if anything comes of this.

Despite what people have said about this newspapers' support of Intlibber we have always tried to give an even picture with all sides being able to comment rather than making judgements or leading 'witch hunts' as many other publications do. Not through a desire to keep a sponsor, as accused, but through what we believe to be fair reporting allowing a forum for people to post their own opinions and arguments.

My personal opinion doesn't matter here even if I think someone has acted very badly I will always try to make sure the reporting here is unbiased.

I would like to say that I truly understand the anger of residents who have not only lost money but also content and much much more BUT please direct that anger at the right people not the ones who have tried to help throughout, I am truly dismayed at the outpouring of hatred directed at those who have not tried to hide.

Dana Vanmoer

SLN has a new headquarters http://slurl.com/secondlife/SkyBeam/161/231/38

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We didn't hear much more about Intilibber after his bankruptcy. In 2011, Kal-El Venkman's Krypton Radio claimed he had an alt account named "Overbrain Unplugged," linked to the Bronyville sim, which fell in July 2011 and the account removed as a ban evasion alt. So apparently he had been banned. His page on the Second Life Wiki describes him as being "banned for multiple breaches of TOS." That would be the last we heard of him until August 2014, in which he posted on Facebook about being limited to a 1 sim "prison" in Second Life to put his items on Marketplace as part of a settlement reached with Linden Lab. He would respond in February 2015, in which he stated, "We reached a mutually agreeable final settlement with Linden Lab, and are pleased with the results. ... This has given us the resources for the next phase of things for us." Intilibber stated he and BNT would be launching their own virtual world, "one based on an uncounterfeitable cryptocurrency, copybot-immune DRM." He went on to say "BNT land holders in SL will be compensated with free purchase price on an equivalent or greater amount of virtual land in this virtual world. BNT shareholders will see their shares continued in the new company, Galactic Systems Inc."

For Second Life Newspaper, BNT's bankruptcy yanked the rug out from under us. Dana scrambled to get a new sponsor and new office, and soon cut a deal with SkyBeam Estates. But the paper wasn't quite the same, our third anniversary celebrations being a low-key affair compared to our second. We continued on for a while. But in April 2010, Dana told the staff she couldn't keep the paper going, and on June 5, Second Life Newspaper folded.

Bixyl Shuftan

The Mama Allpa Conception HUD and Service

Virtual pregnancies in Second Life are nothing new. These services have been in Second Life for some time. Trouble is, the "tummytalkers" they have are often irritating to other residents nearby. And the setup in the hospital resembling an artificial insemination service may not be exactly ideal to those seeing a pregnancy as starting with an act of intimacy between a couple.

Yt Recreant offers an alternative with a more realistic beginning for virtual pregnancies, as well as not having the feedback that others hear: Mama Allpa, "Mama Allpa is a conception HUD system. It addresses people who want to mate in SL with the 'consequence' of having babies. Of course I am a bit biased about the product options (grin), but I can rightly say that my product is the market leader, by far, and also highly configurable."

Yt got the idea for Mama Allpa when she looked into virtual pregnancies on Second Life. She checked the services already on the market, and found them lacking. So she created the conception HUD. "I had for example all these questions that simply occur when one commits to something that lasts longer than a day, like, how much time is available, how long do I want this commitment, how realistic do I want it to be, and all that."

Yt described it as, "a couple HUD system, people can see the other gender, by a small sign on their display. so if you are in a club, and wear it, you can identify others wearing it too. That saves the awkward question … then, when male and female mate, the success of conception depends on some factors, like how often did the couple have sex. But a lot more so, such as in which stage of her cycle is she? The HUD is also configurable … cycle and gestation length adjust automatically … as well as the option to multiple births."

The Mama Allpa HUD is not too expensive, at 249 each, "the system itself comes without any 'hidden sidecosts.' … As I have had the intention to make pregnancy and delivery of babies an affordable potion for everyone," Yt explained, "the HUD also comes with support for prenatal care and delivery, for free, supplied by a team of 50 doctors." The doctors work without charge to clients at private locations, "plus we also provide a clinic here at our island." The Mama Allpa team has personel fluent in Spanish and other languages besides English, "from all time zones and many countries."

The HUD also has the option to suspend fertility, as if the male was using condoms or the female on the pill. There's also a "multiposer" built in, "if one has the mood but not the place (grin). The poser is loaded with mocap animations."

Of when the pregnancy comes to an end, "when the days are up, the HUD simply sends a message, that the days are up, that the HUD now stops counting, and just waits with the delivery, when everything is set. So the mother-to-be can deliver her baby at any stage past month 6 when she and her partner, and whoever else they want around, have the time." The gestation and cycle are also highly configurable.

There is one feature found in other virtual pregnancies that Mama Allpa does not have and will never have: "tummy talkers." "Mama Allpa does not make tummy talkers. Third party people make them. … I would be (pause) pretty much wondering if my belly talked (grin) however, i understand the motivation why people want them as they need kind of an advice, how to do what in a pregnancy. But there, i prefer the 'advisory' that comes the silent way with Mama Allpa. Which is the only HUD system of its sort that does so."

Yt then razzed a box on the ground, "this box for example, picked this one randomly," inside was a display on what Week 9 or a pregnancy is like, suggesting the lady might feel sleepy and have mood swings, "It says, one should see to drink a lot of water and stuff. This box holds then a freebie item, a glass of water (grin), just a small thing. Other boxes hold some wardrobe, games for playing with the partner, cuddle pillows, and more. It's like each week they get a surprise."

Yt mentioned another detail. In real life, "if you are pregnant, you want an ultrasound of course also done by your doc. Mama Allpa is the only system that gives you personalized ultrasound printouts with your name and week on them." She razzed a random one from her inventory, "So, upon examination the doctor just presses 'print' and then there comes the picture, with development, stage, name and week, also for free."

Of the people who use the conception HUD, "there are many different people, and they all have this for different motivations. Some do it for some extra fun. Some do it to 're-live' the parenthood they had in real-life for here. Some do it because they are not having kids in real life," whether from choice or infertility in real life, which can be emotionally devastating to some women, whom may find therapeutic value in a virtual pregnancy, "so really, the motivations vary greatly."

"The support group, which holds roundabout 5000 active people, shows that there are really all different sorts of people. (There are) very 'kinky' ones, and then there are also very normal families." Some are from role-play areas, while some are "who do not roleplay at all, but use this as (an) add-on to their daily SL." The people include all age groups from young to old, as well as all kinds of species of avatars, "it's not really nailed down to … 'humans having kids.' "

"Another big point is also the RL/SL (time) conversion rate. In Second Life, the SL weather system changes day & night in an interval of 4 hours. this value is set 'just so' by Linden Lab. So, the HUD comes with 1 day in SL is 4 hours real-life. But one can change it, from having one SL day = 2 hours up to 1 SL day = 24 hours. And one can change that at any given time, without harming an ongoing pregnancy. That way people can be pregnant really as long as they want, as fast or as slow as they want."

Of the conception HUD, the unit purchased is ready to wear without packing. Upon wearing it, the activation of Xcite scripts is announced. Two sex symbols, male & female appear (Mars & Venus) if there's someone of the opposite sex nearby also using the HUD. But if the wearer is alone, only his/her symbol appears. If a female is willing, the male's HUD will tell him of the girl "opening" herself to him, and no longer being open, "no one except the two get any notices."

The HUD itself also has an option of six languages to appear in. A nonhuman can also set it to his/her species.

A one of a kind, and well supported, virtual pregnancy service in Second Life.

The Main Mama Allpa store can be found at Mama Allpa (156, 202, 28) (Adult). Besides the conception HUD up for sale, there are a number of other vendors from other businesses selling wares at the store. While some are clearly of an adult nature, some are more family-friendly, such as maternity wear. More information about Mama Allpa can be found at the Mama Allpa Times blog, or the help website (Click Here) (note, both sites have an occasional nude picture, so careful about reading from work).

Bixyl Shuftan

Addition: The Mama Allpa blog is no longer active, so the link has been removed.