For a guy who works in the financial services sector, it was an intriguing headline: “Banks Banned in Second Life.” Virtual realities have the appeal of the utopian. We think about virtual worlds as being a better version of our own world. In Second Life, they recently learned that it’s better to have regulated financial institutions. The real world intrudes into the ideal world. After appealing to our collective higher natures, Second Life determined that it was probably better to default to real world regulations. Now you need a real banking charter to do business as a bank in a virtual world.