Yesterday, I wrote about the Second Life Exchange Commission and the Investment Education Team in Second Life. Both groups have an interest in how trading in Second Life is viewed. Today, I received a note in Second Life from the World Stock Exchange (WSE) about what it going on there, and yesterday the Second Life Capital Exchange (SLCapEx) issued a report announcing that they had surpassed WSE in volume.

The WSE notecard talked about Ginko Financial, Midas Bank and Merlin Investment Bank, all companies that have joined the Second Life Deadpool. Perhaps we need to track the Second Life Deadpool similar to how TechCrunch tracks the technology firm deadpool.

Currently, there are forty-seven companies listed on WSE. When I started trading there, it was around seventy. Between the two dozen that have disappeared from WSE, and another half dozen at SLCapEx, the Second Life Deadpool has plenty of members. This shouldn’t be too surprising. As the TechCrunch deadpool shows, technology companies constantly come and go. In a place like Second Life where the barriers to entry are even less and the potentials for fraud are even greater, the deadpool can get crowded pretty quickly.

This should be a reminder to potential investors. Investing in Second Life companies is highly risky. The WSE notecard tries to remind people this, as has the IET training. Yet WSE goes too far, I believe in stressing the ‘fictional’ aspects of their services and the Linden Dollar. Perhaps there are some exceptions to the companies list, but by and far, these are real companies selling real goods and services. The Linden Dollars that they earn and the Linden Dollars deposited at the Second Life banks can easily be converted into U.S. Dollars. One person I spoke with who lost a fair amount of Linden Dollars when Ginko Financial collapsed had been saving that money to pay for their trip to the Second Life Community Convention. There was nothing fictional about this person or their dashed desires to travel to Chicago.

So, as trading continues to grow in Second Life, so will the Second Life Deadpool. Hopefully investors will become more savvy and invest in companies and exchanges where they are least likely to see their investments end up in said deadpool.