A key commodity necessary for the smooth functioning of any market is trust. The less trust, the greater the difficulties. In Second Life, where we only know people by the pseudonyms of their avatars, where we don’t know if someone has an alternative avatar, and where recourse is much less than in other aspects of life, trust is all the more necessary.

Unfortunately, between various scandals, fraud and stupid mistakes, the financial institutions of Second Life are not highly trusted. In order to address this, people banded together to create the Second Life Exchange Commission. It is a noble idea, that so far, has failed to live up to its promise.

In November, the IntLibber Brautigan issued a statement on behalf of the SLEC condemning the World Stock Exchange (WSE) for the way it handled a situation with Midas Bank. In part, that statement said,

As such, it is the duty of all investors and listed companies to divest from HCL and delist their companies from WSE. Companies that refuse to delist from WSE should likewise be divested from by the investing public.

The WSE responded:

The SLEC is not what it once was, it is now a front for IntLibber Brautigan to help him promote his new exchange and to allow him to try and create negative press about the WSE which he has always done since we left his land due to him trying to force WSE on a decision that wasn't in the interests of the market but his land business.

The announcement was directly posted to SLEC members by IntLibber Brautigan and only goes to confirm the above.

They allegations made by IntLibber concerning the Midas Bank situation are completely inaccurate.

In the end, there was no noticeable delistings on WSE in response to the SLEC statement.

Soon after this, IntLibber posted on the AnCapex site allegations that the CEO of Lemur Investments is a fraudster. This was responded to by Lemur Investments where they accuse IntLibber of slander.

More recently, there have been issues where IntLibber confronted Arbitrage Wise about funding behind JT Financial, the company that runs the Second Life Capital Exchange (SLCapEx). SL Reports has a disclosure from Arbitrage Wise where he posts a chat log that has IntLibber making demands of Arbitrage and threatening an FBI investigation. Strange Ranger’s response is to name IntLibber Brautigan Ass Hole of the Year and numerous groups started distancing themselves from SLEC.

With this as background, the SLEC held an open meeting last night. TraderJohn Susa started off the meeting by reminding people that the SLEC is owned by all its members, not by TraderJohn, not by IntLibber, but by everyone. He went on to talk about people joining the SLEC because they believe in the ideals of fair and ethical practices. He spoke about how this is not a game and the actions of the SLEC could have impact on the markets for years to come.

He went on to talk about the initial statement about the WSE. The general consensus seemed to be that most of the people there agreed with the general content of the message but there was considerable disagreement with the way it was executed. IntLibber spoke up noting that there was more to the story than that and TraderJohn told IntLibber he would have his chance to speak. At this point, the meeting opened up. Cadence Juran spoke about this in terms of public relations. She suggested scrubbing the current management and electing a new team. Bogart Beck suggested that SLEC needs a “sincere dialogue as to what behavior is appropriate for any member Elected or otherwise”

TraderJohn did a good job in attempting to bring the issue back to “Where do we go from here?” At this point, IntLibber took the floor and presented his view of what had happened. He started off by saying, “Firstly, the story you think youve heard has been spun by a professional, just as much of BNT's reputation has been spun by those who have sought to bring it down” He spoke for about twelve minutes concerning hacked accounts, stolen ATMs and all kinds of conspiracies against him. At this point, people started jumping in asking for proof of his assertions, particularly Cadence and Bogart.

After another ten minutes, TraderJohn told IntLibber that it was enough for this meeting and eventually told IntLibber to sit down. TraderJohn struggled to get the meeting back under control and focused on a forward facing view of how the SLEC could promote the ideals he had led off the meeting with.

Marc Attenborough and Travis Ristow both contributed to the efforts to get the meeting back on track. Mike31 Dawes offered the simple observation that he had always felt it was “a conflict of interest for any director of an exchange to be a board member of the SLEC”. He suggested that SLEC should be for investors only. This started a lively discussion, followed by Cadence pushing again for completely new management.

In the end it seemed to all devolve into issues of ego and power and the ideals that TraderJohn started off trying to get everyone focused on seemed to be forgotten. Until the key figures in SLEC can put aside their egos and their personal ambitions and focus on the ideals that TraderJohn spoke so passionately about, the SLEC is bound to be at best an irrelevant distraction.

I came to the meeting without much hope that this would happen. As I listened to TraderJohn, those hopes rose, but then as the meeting dragged on, they got dashed. So until there are some real changes, I think it is fair to consider the SLEC nothing but an irrelevant distraction.