There are surprising demographics. It is not only those who don’t have a credit card, or who are cautious about putting credit card details online. More companies are using it to pay suppliers or freelancers who do work for them. Its a good way for a company to hold some funds in an account for that purpose, thus removing all those movements from the regular bank account. The simplicity of sending money to “joesmithsmoney” is a lot easier than getting the iban codes,swift addresses and coordinates for numerous international bank accounts. More people use Ebay to purchase things large and small, everyday, then there’s secondlife, and amazon, and online gambling, its endless…. they may not want to insert credit card details for many reasons. ( no I don’t work for them or get any kickbacks. Although if after reading this, any of you efinance companies begin to feel overwhelmingly generous towards me…. go ahead, double my balance, I dare you.)
Many people, on various forums I have visited, have many axes to grind with paypal and others, who they say won’t give them their money back when they want to close the account, or withdraw funds. (See previous blogs written by Mark and Benson.) I myself have had no problems with this. I do have a nominated bank account however, to empty funds into, so I can get the cash. I also secured my paypal account with my master card perhaps this helps, I dont know how though.
On-line payment companies have been offering cards to draw money at ATMs, or to use as a charge card, for some time now. I think it rather depends where you live, when it comes to the secuirity of these, as some are very bad and others Ok. Anything based outside of regulated U.S.A. or Europe is probably a risk. But don’t quote me on that, again just an opinion.
A nominated bank account is kept within your paypal account, and should you want to empty some funds into your bank account, you request this. I normally wait 5 days for an international transfer into my bank, I wait till I simply have to, there are no charges for this. Although I do pay when receiving funds into Paypal.
If you need to close your account, this can be accomplished with a nominated bank account. Simply request it. I haven’t tested this, as I don’t want to close mine and open it again. Please give me feedback if you’ve had a problem closing, and I’ll research this more. There are hundreds of threads on paypal-forums about this, so Google it.
Tampilkan postingan dengan label DGC News in English. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label DGC News in English. Tampilkan semua postingan
Kamis, Agustus 21, 2008
Rabu, Agustus 20, 2008
Asian e-commerce holds great growth potential
Asian Internet use is rising rapidly, and China and India offer the greatest short- to medium-growth potential in the world. The immediate beneficiaries of this trend will be Internet servers and manufacturers of personal computers, but rapid growth of e-commerce in the region will reshape consumption patterns for certain products and services.
According to a report entitled "Asia-Pacific Online" released by the research firm eMarketer, the number of Internet users in China nearly doubled in 2003 to reach 114 million people. Chinese oInternautso should number 250 million by late 2005.
Manufacturers and marketing companies are increasingly shifting their attention toward Web sites and e-publications as venues for reaching Asian customers. That, in turn, is contributing to dynamic growth of the online publishing industry.
The Online Publishers Association reported that third quarter growth in advertising revenues rose by over 45 percent year-on-year. The preponderance of publications under the AssociationAEs umbrella are in English, but the language mix will change as the number of titles in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean come on strong this year and next.
The shift toward seeking news and other current information via television and the Internet will cause a gradual shift away from traditional print publications in AsiaAEs leading urban centers.
However, widespread use of the Internet as a news source continues to be inhibited by the lack of broadband access in leading Asian markets. Companies offering broadband services and equipment for servers should experience sales growth in excess of 20 percent during 2004 and 2005.
It appears that the broadband barrier will be surmounted over the next few years as Asian nations like Taiwan and South Korea scramble to put the corresponding infrastructure into place. By the end of this year, over 90 percent of South Korean Internet users will have broadband
connections. Progress in that area will be slower in China and India, where broadband access will primarily be limited to major metropolitan areas for several more years.
From a demographic perspective, China and India, account for over 37 percent of the worldAEs population. In both nations, the highest rate of Internet use is found among teens and young adults. Those age groups are particularly tuned into electronic gaming, and that will contribute
to healthy revenue gains for game-related Web sites in 2004 and 2005.
The worldwide subscription income for online gaming sites was valued at over US$600 million in 2003. Korea and Taiwan are the leading markets. The former accounted for a disproportionately high market share of over 50 percent, but other Asian nations are coming on strong. Overall Asian gaming revenues should grow in excess of 15 percent per annum this year and next.
Asian service companies will be among the greatest beneficiaries of growth in e-commerce over the next few years. Consumers in leading Asian consumer markets are only beginning to grow accustomed to booking air travel, car rentals, and hotels via the Internet, but double digit sales growth in those sectors will be noted this year.
Motion picture companies will benefit as viewers purchase videos and movie theater tickets via the Internet. Due to their compact size and ease of shipment, DVD sales should come on strong, but theater ticket sales will also see healthy gains.
According to a report entitled "Asia-Pacific Online" released by the research firm eMarketer, the number of Internet users in China nearly doubled in 2003 to reach 114 million people. Chinese oInternautso should number 250 million by late 2005.
Manufacturers and marketing companies are increasingly shifting their attention toward Web sites and e-publications as venues for reaching Asian customers. That, in turn, is contributing to dynamic growth of the online publishing industry.
The Online Publishers Association reported that third quarter growth in advertising revenues rose by over 45 percent year-on-year. The preponderance of publications under the AssociationAEs umbrella are in English, but the language mix will change as the number of titles in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean come on strong this year and next.
The shift toward seeking news and other current information via television and the Internet will cause a gradual shift away from traditional print publications in AsiaAEs leading urban centers.
However, widespread use of the Internet as a news source continues to be inhibited by the lack of broadband access in leading Asian markets. Companies offering broadband services and equipment for servers should experience sales growth in excess of 20 percent during 2004 and 2005.
It appears that the broadband barrier will be surmounted over the next few years as Asian nations like Taiwan and South Korea scramble to put the corresponding infrastructure into place. By the end of this year, over 90 percent of South Korean Internet users will have broadband
connections. Progress in that area will be slower in China and India, where broadband access will primarily be limited to major metropolitan areas for several more years.
From a demographic perspective, China and India, account for over 37 percent of the worldAEs population. In both nations, the highest rate of Internet use is found among teens and young adults. Those age groups are particularly tuned into electronic gaming, and that will contribute
to healthy revenue gains for game-related Web sites in 2004 and 2005.
The worldwide subscription income for online gaming sites was valued at over US$600 million in 2003. Korea and Taiwan are the leading markets. The former accounted for a disproportionately high market share of over 50 percent, but other Asian nations are coming on strong. Overall Asian gaming revenues should grow in excess of 15 percent per annum this year and next.
Asian service companies will be among the greatest beneficiaries of growth in e-commerce over the next few years. Consumers in leading Asian consumer markets are only beginning to grow accustomed to booking air travel, car rentals, and hotels via the Internet, but double digit sales growth in those sectors will be noted this year.
Motion picture companies will benefit as viewers purchase videos and movie theater tickets via the Internet. Due to their compact size and ease of shipment, DVD sales should come on strong, but theater ticket sales will also see healthy gains.
Selasa, Agustus 19, 2008
AlterGold is under DDoS-attack. How long will the system be down?
On August 15 one of the youngest and one of the most aggressive processors of the today’s online payment market – AlterGold have surprised its customers. However, surprise was rather bitter, or it’s better to say that it was really a shock, rather than a surprise: the site was down.
Interestingly enough but the first though that came to the mind was: Altergold is a scam!!! They have stolen all the money and ran away… Curiously enough but the system, which usually worries about its reputation and makes a splash in press covering every minor step or action, this time was silent. Meanwhile, the phrase: Unable to Connect with Database Host was making all the customers crazy. All the forums were boosting with the posts like this:
i´m a little bit afraid now. in some threads here in forum people discussing about that altergold is maybe scam. now the site is down.
Only later the admins was pleased to announce its customers about the reason of the site outage by posting the following:
Dear Customer,
We regret to inform you that the AlterGold website is currently under DDOS attack at this moment.
All efforts are in place to bring the site back online as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this interruption to service.
Regards,
AlterGold Management
The effect was unexpected. The customers haven’t calmed down; on the contrary the flame was kindled. People started guessing why the developing and the promising system that was pretending to replace e-gold and the wounded eBullion was down. Let’s try to guess as well: The system that is down for several hours probably have a weak protection. The weak protection means the lack of financing. Considering the money spent by AG for the advertisement we cannot say that they are weak, so here another idea suggests itself: altergold simply doesn’t want to spend the money for a good hoster as it doesn’t care for the security of its customers for whom the security of the system was a primary meaning. However, the users have another point of view:
If there were under ddos atttack, then you wouldn't see that message (because the server would crash).
Even I didn't expect them to run away with the money that soon.
The same time we are interested why the official blog of Altergold is keeping mum as well. The last update of the site was on July 24, 2008. And it is very strange as the primary function of the any blog is to provide the information. Or, may be the admins think that website outage is a minor problem and it not worth to be covered? Very unpleasant situation indeed, and the complete lack of any information is just killing… So, what is it? Ddos attack and the admins neglect or a daring scam? At the moment we can say nothing just to guess.
Interestingly enough but the first though that came to the mind was: Altergold is a scam!!! They have stolen all the money and ran away… Curiously enough but the system, which usually worries about its reputation and makes a splash in press covering every minor step or action, this time was silent. Meanwhile, the phrase: Unable to Connect with Database Host was making all the customers crazy. All the forums were boosting with the posts like this:
i´m a little bit afraid now. in some threads here in forum people discussing about that altergold is maybe scam. now the site is down.
Only later the admins was pleased to announce its customers about the reason of the site outage by posting the following:
Dear Customer,
We regret to inform you that the AlterGold website is currently under DDOS attack at this moment.
All efforts are in place to bring the site back online as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by this interruption to service.
Regards,
AlterGold Management
The effect was unexpected. The customers haven’t calmed down; on the contrary the flame was kindled. People started guessing why the developing and the promising system that was pretending to replace e-gold and the wounded eBullion was down. Let’s try to guess as well: The system that is down for several hours probably have a weak protection. The weak protection means the lack of financing. Considering the money spent by AG for the advertisement we cannot say that they are weak, so here another idea suggests itself: altergold simply doesn’t want to spend the money for a good hoster as it doesn’t care for the security of its customers for whom the security of the system was a primary meaning. However, the users have another point of view:
If there were under ddos atttack, then you wouldn't see that message (because the server would crash).
Even I didn't expect them to run away with the money that soon.
The same time we are interested why the official blog of Altergold is keeping mum as well. The last update of the site was on July 24, 2008. And it is very strange as the primary function of the any blog is to provide the information. Or, may be the admins think that website outage is a minor problem and it not worth to be covered? Very unpleasant situation indeed, and the complete lack of any information is just killing… So, what is it? Ddos attack and the admins neglect or a daring scam? At the moment we can say nothing just to guess.
Kamis, Agustus 07, 2008
Liberty Reserve Expands With Gold Backed Reserve Currency
"10/19/2007, Important Information, There are no M.L.A.T* treaties signed, or otherwise established between Costa Rica and the United States. HOWEVER, there are M.L.A.T* and cooperation agreements established and in force with the governments of the United Kingdom, Panama and many other countries. Unlike Liberty Reserve, which is registered in Costa Rica, any company that claims to be registered in Panama, United Kingdom or in any of the countries on the M.L.A.T* list is in fact in danger of being raided by US authorities and are just as vulnerable to unfair seizures as e-gold."
Alive and well living in Costa Rica, the Liberty Reserve system appears to be well out of "Angry Uncle Sam’s" grasp.
LR is a growing, popular digital currency system with operations similar to those of e-gold in the early 1990’s. However this system has some super advantages and the operation is run by a very experienced team. Their marketing skills, communication efforts and global reach are now paying off dramatically. When you compare the traffic numbers from Compete.com, you will see that LR has overtaken the previous second place contender e-bullion and is now gunning for the top e-gold spot. If busy & happy exchange agents are any indication of success, we might conclude that Liberty Reserve is at the pinnacle of success already. Low exchange rates, sci integration, multiple language demos and ads....LR seems to already have it all.
The company has just completed their gold backing accounts, so if you don’t already have a Liberty Reserve account, its officially time to get one. From the official Liberty Reserve Blog.
3/15 Important - gold backing, Liberty Reserve is working on adding gold backing. In addition to USD and EURO, a third option - gold backing, should become available later this year. We have successfully implemented and tested the software portion of this update. We are now in the process of research for the most reliable and cost effective solution for physical gold storage for our members. There will be an additional announcement made as soon as we are ready to accept orders from exchangers. We may enable our software to support displaying gold balances sooner, but please refrain from e-mailing us about gold backing until we make an official announcement. http://blog.libertyreserve.com/2008/03/important-gold-backing.html
6/25 Gold backing is coming, After a thorough and careful research we have found the best solution for our members for gold storage. We are in final stages of signing necessary documentation and preparing the allocated storage. The allocated storage will be audited twice a year and audit information will be publicly available on-line in the upcoming new version of Liberty Reserve software. Physical location of gold will be in Europe, under the management of well known and reputable metal depository entity. http://blog.libertyreserve.com/2008/06/gold-backing-is-coming.html
7/09 Gold backing, As we have promised, we have reached and signed an agreement for allocated gold storage. Once this option is enabled you will see a third balance (in grams) listed on your account. We are preparing updated instructions for exchangers for purchases of gold inventory. http://blog.libertyreserve.com/2008/07/gold-backing.html
7/15 Finishing all upgrades + gold backing, We are happy to announce that we are finishing all the upgrades. We have installed all the physical equipment and testing it now. Gold backing is now available as promised. We expect to be finished before the end of the day (GMT-6). http://blog.libertyreserve.com/2008/07/finishing-all-upgrades-gold-backing.html
7/16 Gold Backing, Please note that obligated to meet strict requirements of our gold backing provider for availability of service on-line and connection of gold price feeds, we are required to update slightly our software and provide you with uninterrupted service solution, which is currently being done through Prolexic. Our part has been done as we have promised before. We are now awaiting for Prolexic to to finish their installation routine. As soon as we get updated completion time we will post it here. We understand this may be frustrating to many, but please rest assured that these steps are necessary for the web site to work flawlessly in the future. http://blog.libertyreserve.com/2008/07/gold-backing_16.html
5 blog entries and updates in 4 months...now that is good communications with clients. One of the best traits of Liberty Reserve has been the constant marketing of the digital currency across many web sites in the past year. Ads appear in multiple languages, exchange agents are doing business locally in many countries and even the so called ‘investment’ program web sites have plenty of demo’s and screenshots showing how to get started or how to make a payment using a Liberty Reserve account.
This digital currency will no doubt be the most widely marketed currency since the Internet began. Visits are initiated when a user enters a site. As the user interacts with the site the visit is live. Visits are considered live until the user’s interaction with the site has ceased for a 30-minute period.
For instance, User A enters Yahoo at 9:00. User A checks their email and reviews the week’s weather forecast. User A then goes to a meeting at 9:30. She returns at 10:30 and checks her Yahoo email again. Since 30 minutes lapsed between her two interactions User A is considered "one person" that made "two visits".
DGCmagazine does not recommend or even condone any Internet ‘investment’ schemes ever. Costa Rica is still a sovereign nation and free to make their own laws- CR allows this DGC to legally operate.
Alive and well living in Costa Rica, the Liberty Reserve system appears to be well out of "Angry Uncle Sam’s" grasp.
LR is a growing, popular digital currency system with operations similar to those of e-gold in the early 1990’s. However this system has some super advantages and the operation is run by a very experienced team. Their marketing skills, communication efforts and global reach are now paying off dramatically. When you compare the traffic numbers from Compete.com, you will see that LR has overtaken the previous second place contender e-bullion and is now gunning for the top e-gold spot. If busy & happy exchange agents are any indication of success, we might conclude that Liberty Reserve is at the pinnacle of success already. Low exchange rates, sci integration, multiple language demos and ads....LR seems to already have it all.
The company has just completed their gold backing accounts, so if you don’t already have a Liberty Reserve account, its officially time to get one. From the official Liberty Reserve Blog.
3/15 Important - gold backing, Liberty Reserve is working on adding gold backing. In addition to USD and EURO, a third option - gold backing, should become available later this year. We have successfully implemented and tested the software portion of this update. We are now in the process of research for the most reliable and cost effective solution for physical gold storage for our members. There will be an additional announcement made as soon as we are ready to accept orders from exchangers. We may enable our software to support displaying gold balances sooner, but please refrain from e-mailing us about gold backing until we make an official announcement. http://blog.libertyreserve.com/2008/03/important-gold-backing.html
6/25 Gold backing is coming, After a thorough and careful research we have found the best solution for our members for gold storage. We are in final stages of signing necessary documentation and preparing the allocated storage. The allocated storage will be audited twice a year and audit information will be publicly available on-line in the upcoming new version of Liberty Reserve software. Physical location of gold will be in Europe, under the management of well known and reputable metal depository entity. http://blog.libertyreserve.com/2008/06/gold-backing-is-coming.html
7/09 Gold backing, As we have promised, we have reached and signed an agreement for allocated gold storage. Once this option is enabled you will see a third balance (in grams) listed on your account. We are preparing updated instructions for exchangers for purchases of gold inventory. http://blog.libertyreserve.com/2008/07/gold-backing.html
7/15 Finishing all upgrades + gold backing, We are happy to announce that we are finishing all the upgrades. We have installed all the physical equipment and testing it now. Gold backing is now available as promised. We expect to be finished before the end of the day (GMT-6). http://blog.libertyreserve.com/2008/07/finishing-all-upgrades-gold-backing.html
7/16 Gold Backing, Please note that obligated to meet strict requirements of our gold backing provider for availability of service on-line and connection of gold price feeds, we are required to update slightly our software and provide you with uninterrupted service solution, which is currently being done through Prolexic. Our part has been done as we have promised before. We are now awaiting for Prolexic to to finish their installation routine. As soon as we get updated completion time we will post it here. We understand this may be frustrating to many, but please rest assured that these steps are necessary for the web site to work flawlessly in the future. http://blog.libertyreserve.com/2008/07/gold-backing_16.html
5 blog entries and updates in 4 months...now that is good communications with clients. One of the best traits of Liberty Reserve has been the constant marketing of the digital currency across many web sites in the past year. Ads appear in multiple languages, exchange agents are doing business locally in many countries and even the so called ‘investment’ program web sites have plenty of demo’s and screenshots showing how to get started or how to make a payment using a Liberty Reserve account.
This digital currency will no doubt be the most widely marketed currency since the Internet began. Visits are initiated when a user enters a site. As the user interacts with the site the visit is live. Visits are considered live until the user’s interaction with the site has ceased for a 30-minute period.
For instance, User A enters Yahoo at 9:00. User A checks their email and reviews the week’s weather forecast. User A then goes to a meeting at 9:30. She returns at 10:30 and checks her Yahoo email again. Since 30 minutes lapsed between her two interactions User A is considered "one person" that made "two visits".
DGCmagazine does not recommend or even condone any Internet ‘investment’ schemes ever. Costa Rica is still a sovereign nation and free to make their own laws- CR allows this DGC to legally operate.
How the ‘Man’ finally brought e-gold down by Pelle Braendgaard
e-gold is an 100% gold backed electronic currency. It revolutionized the electronic currency world using pretty simple double entry book keeping technology backed by currently 2.54 metric tons of gold and innovative legal structures to keep it safe. They are in the news today and there are lots of things startups can learn from their story about trust, innovation, legal structures, transparency and how not to deal with regulators.
It is with sadness I today read Douglas Jackson’s blog post outlining the final blow to e-gold by the US government. It felt like this wasn’t written by Doug, but by Doug with the NSA’s secret alien mind control device implanted. In reality the mind control device used was the threat of 20 years of jail and a half million dollar fine.
Also as I write in the Agree2 User Agreement:
‘We are men of principles, but stronger men than us have changed principles with 3 hovering black helicopters over them. If you know what I mean.’
This is a case where probably a bit more than 3 hovering black helicopters were hovering over them. So I guess we can only feel sad and hope the best for Doug and his family.
The Charge
The government had been after them for a while and where they finally got them to plea bargain admitting "Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering" and "Operation of an unlicensed Money Transmitting Business". The real important of the two was the Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering charge, which has nothing to do with Douglas Jackson carrying suit cases filled with $100 bills into banks in the Cayman Islands. It is failure to do "Know Your Customer" or KYC as it’s known in the financial industry.
Know Your Customer
KYC requires financial institutions including money transmitters to know who their customers are. This can involve simply showing your id when you open an account in the US. Other jurisdictions such as Panama are way more conservative requiring bank references, lawyers references, information about your assets etc. In the US PayPal innovated by inventing that tiny authenticating payment to your bank account, which seems to be enough KYC for single purpose financial institutions such as payments and savings.
KYC since it was introduced in the late 90s as a requirement has been the single most destructive concept for innovation and startups in the financial space. e-gold was the last proud hold out against it as it went so against the principles of their operations. You could pretty much open any amount of accounts that you wanted to without any real documentation.
E-Golds innovation in Governance
Where e-gold truly innovated was their governance model. This is also what makes it so difficult to add a PayPal like KYC step to their technology. e-gold is built up of several different legal structures who are independent.
Gold and Silver Reserve Inc (G&SR) is the parent company of it all and run by Douglas Jackson. In 1999 they did a major restructuring, which is outlined in their e-gold Account User Agreement
The e-gold Ltd a company registered in Nevis in the Caribbean operated the book entry system. The book entry system is basically the servers containing the accounts and transactions. This is what you see when you go to the e-gold site. This site also has an innovative examiner tool as seen in the screen shots above and below:
The e-gold Bullion Reserve Special Purpose Trust is a little understood but very important part as they actually hold the title to the gold on behalf of account holders.
After that there are the 3 different gold repositories Brinks, Transguard and MAT Securitas Express AG who hold physical bars of gold in London, Zurich and Dubai.
OmniPay is the primary "exchange provider" or interface between the e-gold system and the outside world. This was/is operated directly by G&SR out of their offices in Melbourne, FL. If you wanted to buy or sell large amounts of e-gold you essentially wire them the funds and they provided you with gold in your e-gold account. From what I understand OmniPay was pretty thorough doing KYC.
Transparency and real time auditing by users
Since very early days. Probably earlier than 1998 e-gold has offered several levels of transparency that are still unheard of. When I was working in the payment space myself I liked to look at these as "live audit" tools as normal users can keep an eye on the system.
The most important tool is the e-gold Examiner which presents a live view of the accounts of the entire e-gold system. Many of the screenshots in this article come from the examiner. You can see how much Gold, Silver, Platinum and Palladium is held (the assets) and how much is in circulation or held by users (the liabilities).
Scrolling further down you can see how much is held at each repository. You can further drill down on these to see information about the exact bars held at each repository. This info includes the Brand, serial number, purity and exact weight of each. All of this information is verified annually by the auditors report.
Another interesting audit feature is the e-gold system statistics page. This contains interesting live statistics of the accounts and transactions held. As you can see there is still quite a lot of activity going on, however the amount of spends (transactions in e-gold speak) has gone down.
Account Holders
There are finally two other parties to the whole structure, the individual account holders and the independent exchange agents.
A key difference between e-gold and a bank is that as an account holder you actually own the gold in your account. When you deposit money in a bank account you strictly speaking don’t own it anymore. You lend it the bank. For this the bank pays you interest. This leads to the risks that we’re seeing again now when banks go bust depositors lose money. There are various band-aids such as FDIC to insure against this, however it is not perfect. Douglas Jackson could never touch your gold, reinvest it, sell it or otherwise.
In e-gold all transfers are final, which is one reason it became popular originally as an alternative to PayPal. The only way this can be done is by being at more than arms length distance from the banking system. The US banking system allow charge backs of just about any payment. So lets say you receive a wire of $100,000 from an investor. AFAIK theoretically speaking he could cancel that wire within a year. Foreign banks are normally the ones who are hurt most by this, but they grin and bear it. In e-gold one such chargeback could undermine the stability of the system.
Independent Exchange Agents
The Independent Exchange Agents was a very innovative idea that e-gold thought up as part of their reorg in 1999 to achieve this seperation of concerns. OmniPay would focus on large exchanges with established known players, but small independent local exchange providers would exchange between local currency and e-gold. Jackson and co decided from the beginning not to certify or regulate this, but rather let the market work it all out. This was extremely innovative, but might in the end have been one of the downfalls of the system. Theoretically this pushes legal compliance in each jurisdiction out to these exchange agents, but many of these were not following their local rules.
IceGold was an example of a really well run Exchange Agent run by Paul Vahur out of Estonia. Paul and his team would let you buy and sell e-gold at 2% below or above respectively of the official e-gold spot rate. Unfortunately a notice on his site says that they have been hit by the dreaded KYC as well:
‘Due to the adoption of Estonia’s new Anti Money-laundering Law on Jan 28th 2008 we have decided to stop providing exchange services. The new law requires exchangers of alternative payment systems – such as IceGold – to identify all customers face to face.’
Besides good guys like Paul, there were lots of instances with fraudulent exchangers. Several industry associations such as GDCA were set up to certify exchangers, but a quick google search shows me that there are still many around that don’t exactly ooze trust. That said the Gold Pages Electronic Currency Directory still has 154 exchangers listed.
It also led to the development of a whole series of "Autoexchangers" which let you exchange e-gold automatically for other electronic currencies such as WebMoney. In his blog post Doug knowing well that he can’t force them to stop yet pleads:
‘We are requesting that autoexchangers – even though the technical beauty of the autoexchanger concept is sublime – cease supporting exchanges to or from e-gold for the time being. The problem with the autoexchanger concept is that although the autoexchangers themselves may be perfectly compliant with requirements [promulgated by Webmoney and e-gold] to automatically put tracking data in their memo fields, and despite the fact that Webmoney is also committed to aiding in the suppression of cybercrime, the fact is that a substantial proportion of the cybercriminals that abuse e-gold have evolved into a modus operandi that involves autoexchanging possible proceeds of crime into Webmoney, sometimes within minutes of receiving the value, thus making interdiction a matter of catch-up or closing the barn door after the horse is gone.’
Good Innovation
In the end the freedom that the lack of KYC and knowing that all transfers are final encouraged lots of innovation. People built special purpose currencies on top of e-gold. An online Casino created a series of bonds as an experiment that paid back depending on how many hands were plaid during the lifetime of the series of bond. Lots of small merchants as well as sites like Get a Freelancer accept e-gold due to both perceived and real pain accepting PayPal or Credit Cards.
Bad Innovation
All of this freedom also fit great with a less nice but highly profitable set of scams known as High Yield Investment Programs or HYIP’s as well as other Ponzi like scams. These programs often claim to pay %100 interest over a period of a few weeks. There are 1000’s of them out there and many of the use e-gold. E-gold was perfect. The two aspects that encouraged innovation lack of KYC and lack of charge backs made it easy for scammers to rob money from financially uneducated people.
The e-gold mailing lists were filled with people analyzing the E-Gold Stats page for any variations. Often they noticed large increases in a certain transaction size and you could guess that another popular HYIP was making the rounds.
All though e-gold claims that they have helped law enforcement bring hundreds of criminals to justice there are thousands more small and large crooks that have slipped through the cracks and this is likely why the US Justice Department started this case.
However following that do you need to charge the Federal Reserve Chairman for conspiracy to money laundering just because US currency notes are one of the most common instruments of payment used in criminal acts. Or if you look at e-gold as a merely a web service intermediary should Sergey and Larry also face personal criminal charges because lots of Ads for scams and illegal products are placed using Adwords?
Personally I am against the case but I find it was pretty much inevitable. To create such as system even partially on US territory is pretty much impossible. While the key aspects such as the trust and gold holdings being held outside the US as long as you have one toe in the US you are an easy target.
I was personally involved in creating an alternative currency system in Panama and I really wouldn’t even recommend doing anything like e-gold in most of the traditional offshore jurisdictions such as Panama or Cayman Islands as they have way more difficult KYC requirements now than US and EU jurisdictions. The best bet is for you to do it within a major jurisdiction and follow the regulatory pain.
Alternatives
Several alternatives exist to e-gold:
Webmoney is probably one of the safest bets right now outside the US as they being in Russia are unlikely to bow to pressure from the US and EU. The downside of this of course is the image of anything todo with money and Russia. I don’t known anything about them really except they’ve been around for a long time and seem stable. They also seem to have figured out a way to create trust in a very low trust society such as Russia.
GoldMoney is another good alternative to e-gold. They are gold based and have the same no charge back policy. There are many, many similarities between them and e-gold. However being pragmatic they instituted strong KYC practices early on and AFAIK don’t allow independent exchange providers. You have to go through certain certified exchange agents.
They are regulated by the Jersey Financial Services Commision which probably means they are safe in EU. Their principals are in the US, so they could theoretically be hit by the "Operation of an unlicensed Money Transmitting Business" charge. However PayPal was hit by this and are still in business. I think as long as they are strict with KYC they will remain in businesses. This strictness though has meant that not quite as much innovation has been going on with GoldMoney as with e-gold. Granted far fewer scams have been perpetrated with GoldMoney as well.
PayPal is still around and is still the number one player in p2p and small business electronic payments (I think). Several interesting applications have been built on PayPal. That said lots of small businesses have had their businesses destroyed due to over reliance on them. Just google PayPal sucks for examples.
The interesting new player for startups wishing to innovate in e-commerce applications is Amazon’s Flexible Payment System which opens up all kinds of interesting applications. It is very similar to the payment system I was working on in Panama. I am personally very interested in trying it out and will report back in the future on this.
Amazon has built up solid knowledge of seemingly half the world so KYC is way easier for them than for just about anyone else. This doubled with their operational experience in handling their own internal payments can only bode well for them in the future. Due to the interlinking with the traditional financial system charge backs are almost certainly still a problem, but they do have various interesting features for managing this risk.
An even more interesting new trend is that many FaceBook Applications are now financing themselves with their own virtual currencies. They sell currency units and/or allow people to earn them. Then they sell virtual products such as virtual flowers to their users. It will be interesting to see how this moves on and if some of them eventually will get hit by overzealous regulators.
The Legacy of e-gold
The innovations in governance that e-gold spear headed made e-gold a trusted system. It is still operational today, except that you can’t create new accounts. Doug has done all kinds of bad moves in the past such as when he sued my old pal Ian Grigg and another friend of mine Charlie Evans in 2001. I was present at the EFCE conference in Edinburgh when they were both served. Doug and G&SR lost the case.
It is pretty interesting thought that even after this and other stupid moves by Douglas Jackson, people still had trust in the system. It will be interesting to see what happens in the e-gold economy in the coming months while they build KYC into the system.
Lessons for startups in 2008
Lessons that web startups can learn from this are i think in particular about governance and transparency. If people are relying on your service you need a user agreement that protects your users against you. Real time public statistics can also go a long way in providing transparency and trust in your system. It might even make it easier for you to get investors.
I wrote about e-gold earlier in How Doug took on the US Dollar. I should probably disclose that I have met Doug and several other people from the team during a visit to their offices in Melbourne, FL in 1999. I currently have probably less than a grams worth of e-gold in my account with a very low account number. I haven’t logged in to it in years.
by Pelle Braendgaard
http://stakeventures.com/
It is with sadness I today read Douglas Jackson’s blog post outlining the final blow to e-gold by the US government. It felt like this wasn’t written by Doug, but by Doug with the NSA’s secret alien mind control device implanted. In reality the mind control device used was the threat of 20 years of jail and a half million dollar fine.
Also as I write in the Agree2 User Agreement:
‘We are men of principles, but stronger men than us have changed principles with 3 hovering black helicopters over them. If you know what I mean.’
This is a case where probably a bit more than 3 hovering black helicopters were hovering over them. So I guess we can only feel sad and hope the best for Doug and his family.
The Charge
The government had been after them for a while and where they finally got them to plea bargain admitting "Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering" and "Operation of an unlicensed Money Transmitting Business". The real important of the two was the Conspiracy to Commit Money Laundering charge, which has nothing to do with Douglas Jackson carrying suit cases filled with $100 bills into banks in the Cayman Islands. It is failure to do "Know Your Customer" or KYC as it’s known in the financial industry.
Know Your Customer
KYC requires financial institutions including money transmitters to know who their customers are. This can involve simply showing your id when you open an account in the US. Other jurisdictions such as Panama are way more conservative requiring bank references, lawyers references, information about your assets etc. In the US PayPal innovated by inventing that tiny authenticating payment to your bank account, which seems to be enough KYC for single purpose financial institutions such as payments and savings.
KYC since it was introduced in the late 90s as a requirement has been the single most destructive concept for innovation and startups in the financial space. e-gold was the last proud hold out against it as it went so against the principles of their operations. You could pretty much open any amount of accounts that you wanted to without any real documentation.
E-Golds innovation in Governance
Where e-gold truly innovated was their governance model. This is also what makes it so difficult to add a PayPal like KYC step to their technology. e-gold is built up of several different legal structures who are independent.
Gold and Silver Reserve Inc (G&SR) is the parent company of it all and run by Douglas Jackson. In 1999 they did a major restructuring, which is outlined in their e-gold Account User Agreement
The e-gold Ltd a company registered in Nevis in the Caribbean operated the book entry system. The book entry system is basically the servers containing the accounts and transactions. This is what you see when you go to the e-gold site. This site also has an innovative examiner tool as seen in the screen shots above and below:
The e-gold Bullion Reserve Special Purpose Trust is a little understood but very important part as they actually hold the title to the gold on behalf of account holders.
After that there are the 3 different gold repositories Brinks, Transguard and MAT Securitas Express AG who hold physical bars of gold in London, Zurich and Dubai.
OmniPay is the primary "exchange provider" or interface between the e-gold system and the outside world. This was/is operated directly by G&SR out of their offices in Melbourne, FL. If you wanted to buy or sell large amounts of e-gold you essentially wire them the funds and they provided you with gold in your e-gold account. From what I understand OmniPay was pretty thorough doing KYC.
Transparency and real time auditing by users
Since very early days. Probably earlier than 1998 e-gold has offered several levels of transparency that are still unheard of. When I was working in the payment space myself I liked to look at these as "live audit" tools as normal users can keep an eye on the system.
The most important tool is the e-gold Examiner which presents a live view of the accounts of the entire e-gold system. Many of the screenshots in this article come from the examiner. You can see how much Gold, Silver, Platinum and Palladium is held (the assets) and how much is in circulation or held by users (the liabilities).
Scrolling further down you can see how much is held at each repository. You can further drill down on these to see information about the exact bars held at each repository. This info includes the Brand, serial number, purity and exact weight of each. All of this information is verified annually by the auditors report.
Another interesting audit feature is the e-gold system statistics page. This contains interesting live statistics of the accounts and transactions held. As you can see there is still quite a lot of activity going on, however the amount of spends (transactions in e-gold speak) has gone down.
Account Holders
There are finally two other parties to the whole structure, the individual account holders and the independent exchange agents.
A key difference between e-gold and a bank is that as an account holder you actually own the gold in your account. When you deposit money in a bank account you strictly speaking don’t own it anymore. You lend it the bank. For this the bank pays you interest. This leads to the risks that we’re seeing again now when banks go bust depositors lose money. There are various band-aids such as FDIC to insure against this, however it is not perfect. Douglas Jackson could never touch your gold, reinvest it, sell it or otherwise.
In e-gold all transfers are final, which is one reason it became popular originally as an alternative to PayPal. The only way this can be done is by being at more than arms length distance from the banking system. The US banking system allow charge backs of just about any payment. So lets say you receive a wire of $100,000 from an investor. AFAIK theoretically speaking he could cancel that wire within a year. Foreign banks are normally the ones who are hurt most by this, but they grin and bear it. In e-gold one such chargeback could undermine the stability of the system.
Independent Exchange Agents
The Independent Exchange Agents was a very innovative idea that e-gold thought up as part of their reorg in 1999 to achieve this seperation of concerns. OmniPay would focus on large exchanges with established known players, but small independent local exchange providers would exchange between local currency and e-gold. Jackson and co decided from the beginning not to certify or regulate this, but rather let the market work it all out. This was extremely innovative, but might in the end have been one of the downfalls of the system. Theoretically this pushes legal compliance in each jurisdiction out to these exchange agents, but many of these were not following their local rules.
IceGold was an example of a really well run Exchange Agent run by Paul Vahur out of Estonia. Paul and his team would let you buy and sell e-gold at 2% below or above respectively of the official e-gold spot rate. Unfortunately a notice on his site says that they have been hit by the dreaded KYC as well:
‘Due to the adoption of Estonia’s new Anti Money-laundering Law on Jan 28th 2008 we have decided to stop providing exchange services. The new law requires exchangers of alternative payment systems – such as IceGold – to identify all customers face to face.’
Besides good guys like Paul, there were lots of instances with fraudulent exchangers. Several industry associations such as GDCA were set up to certify exchangers, but a quick google search shows me that there are still many around that don’t exactly ooze trust. That said the Gold Pages Electronic Currency Directory still has 154 exchangers listed.
It also led to the development of a whole series of "Autoexchangers" which let you exchange e-gold automatically for other electronic currencies such as WebMoney. In his blog post Doug knowing well that he can’t force them to stop yet pleads:
‘We are requesting that autoexchangers – even though the technical beauty of the autoexchanger concept is sublime – cease supporting exchanges to or from e-gold for the time being. The problem with the autoexchanger concept is that although the autoexchangers themselves may be perfectly compliant with requirements [promulgated by Webmoney and e-gold] to automatically put tracking data in their memo fields, and despite the fact that Webmoney is also committed to aiding in the suppression of cybercrime, the fact is that a substantial proportion of the cybercriminals that abuse e-gold have evolved into a modus operandi that involves autoexchanging possible proceeds of crime into Webmoney, sometimes within minutes of receiving the value, thus making interdiction a matter of catch-up or closing the barn door after the horse is gone.’
Good Innovation
In the end the freedom that the lack of KYC and knowing that all transfers are final encouraged lots of innovation. People built special purpose currencies on top of e-gold. An online Casino created a series of bonds as an experiment that paid back depending on how many hands were plaid during the lifetime of the series of bond. Lots of small merchants as well as sites like Get a Freelancer accept e-gold due to both perceived and real pain accepting PayPal or Credit Cards.
Bad Innovation
All of this freedom also fit great with a less nice but highly profitable set of scams known as High Yield Investment Programs or HYIP’s as well as other Ponzi like scams. These programs often claim to pay %100 interest over a period of a few weeks. There are 1000’s of them out there and many of the use e-gold. E-gold was perfect. The two aspects that encouraged innovation lack of KYC and lack of charge backs made it easy for scammers to rob money from financially uneducated people.
The e-gold mailing lists were filled with people analyzing the E-Gold Stats page for any variations. Often they noticed large increases in a certain transaction size and you could guess that another popular HYIP was making the rounds.
All though e-gold claims that they have helped law enforcement bring hundreds of criminals to justice there are thousands more small and large crooks that have slipped through the cracks and this is likely why the US Justice Department started this case.
However following that do you need to charge the Federal Reserve Chairman for conspiracy to money laundering just because US currency notes are one of the most common instruments of payment used in criminal acts. Or if you look at e-gold as a merely a web service intermediary should Sergey and Larry also face personal criminal charges because lots of Ads for scams and illegal products are placed using Adwords?
Personally I am against the case but I find it was pretty much inevitable. To create such as system even partially on US territory is pretty much impossible. While the key aspects such as the trust and gold holdings being held outside the US as long as you have one toe in the US you are an easy target.
I was personally involved in creating an alternative currency system in Panama and I really wouldn’t even recommend doing anything like e-gold in most of the traditional offshore jurisdictions such as Panama or Cayman Islands as they have way more difficult KYC requirements now than US and EU jurisdictions. The best bet is for you to do it within a major jurisdiction and follow the regulatory pain.
Alternatives
Several alternatives exist to e-gold:
Webmoney is probably one of the safest bets right now outside the US as they being in Russia are unlikely to bow to pressure from the US and EU. The downside of this of course is the image of anything todo with money and Russia. I don’t known anything about them really except they’ve been around for a long time and seem stable. They also seem to have figured out a way to create trust in a very low trust society such as Russia.
GoldMoney is another good alternative to e-gold. They are gold based and have the same no charge back policy. There are many, many similarities between them and e-gold. However being pragmatic they instituted strong KYC practices early on and AFAIK don’t allow independent exchange providers. You have to go through certain certified exchange agents.
They are regulated by the Jersey Financial Services Commision which probably means they are safe in EU. Their principals are in the US, so they could theoretically be hit by the "Operation of an unlicensed Money Transmitting Business" charge. However PayPal was hit by this and are still in business. I think as long as they are strict with KYC they will remain in businesses. This strictness though has meant that not quite as much innovation has been going on with GoldMoney as with e-gold. Granted far fewer scams have been perpetrated with GoldMoney as well.
PayPal is still around and is still the number one player in p2p and small business electronic payments (I think). Several interesting applications have been built on PayPal. That said lots of small businesses have had their businesses destroyed due to over reliance on them. Just google PayPal sucks for examples.
The interesting new player for startups wishing to innovate in e-commerce applications is Amazon’s Flexible Payment System which opens up all kinds of interesting applications. It is very similar to the payment system I was working on in Panama. I am personally very interested in trying it out and will report back in the future on this.
Amazon has built up solid knowledge of seemingly half the world so KYC is way easier for them than for just about anyone else. This doubled with their operational experience in handling their own internal payments can only bode well for them in the future. Due to the interlinking with the traditional financial system charge backs are almost certainly still a problem, but they do have various interesting features for managing this risk.
An even more interesting new trend is that many FaceBook Applications are now financing themselves with their own virtual currencies. They sell currency units and/or allow people to earn them. Then they sell virtual products such as virtual flowers to their users. It will be interesting to see how this moves on and if some of them eventually will get hit by overzealous regulators.
The Legacy of e-gold
The innovations in governance that e-gold spear headed made e-gold a trusted system. It is still operational today, except that you can’t create new accounts. Doug has done all kinds of bad moves in the past such as when he sued my old pal Ian Grigg and another friend of mine Charlie Evans in 2001. I was present at the EFCE conference in Edinburgh when they were both served. Doug and G&SR lost the case.
It is pretty interesting thought that even after this and other stupid moves by Douglas Jackson, people still had trust in the system. It will be interesting to see what happens in the e-gold economy in the coming months while they build KYC into the system.
Lessons for startups in 2008
Lessons that web startups can learn from this are i think in particular about governance and transparency. If people are relying on your service you need a user agreement that protects your users against you. Real time public statistics can also go a long way in providing transparency and trust in your system. It might even make it easier for you to get investors.
I wrote about e-gold earlier in How Doug took on the US Dollar. I should probably disclose that I have met Doug and several other people from the team during a visit to their offices in Melbourne, FL in 1999. I currently have probably less than a grams worth of e-gold in my account with a very low account number. I haven’t logged in to it in years.
by Pelle Braendgaard
http://stakeventures.com/
Governments Declare War on “Digital Gold” Services by Mark Nestmann
by Mark Nestmann - http://www.nestmann.com
I’m a “gold bug.” I distrust paper money of all kinds and am particularly suspicious of my own domestic currency, the U.S. dollar. Plenty of people share my antipathy toward the greenback. And it’s no surprise why. Measured in terms of gold, the dollar has lost more than 95% of its value in the last 100 years. Another way of looking at it is that during that period, the price of gold has increased more than 20 times in dollar terms—from an official price of $20.67/oz in 1908 to more than $900/oz today. With a record like that, you’d think no one would own U.S. dollars. But unfortunately, the U.S. government gives us few practical alternatives. Among other compulsory means, the government’s “legal tender” laws force us to accept dollars “for all debts public or private.”
However, the government’s monopoly on money is beginning to end. In the last decade, the Internet, combined with massive advances in data processing technology, has made it possible to own “digital gold,” through companies like GoldMoney.com. The basic idea couldn’t be simpler. You open an account with GoldMoney or similar service in much the same way as you do at a bank. But instead of holding dollars, the account holds gold. You can then use the gold in the account to pay other GoldMoney accountholders for goods or services they provide. Instead of having those goods or services priced in dollars, euros, or pesos, they’re priced in grams of gold. In return for facilitating the transaction, GoldMoney receives a small fee.
And, guess what? There’s no need for any government to intervene in the process. Indeed, services like GoldMoney are a seductive way of getting ordinary people accustomed to doing business outside the fiat money system. In the not-too-distant future, you may see the equivalent of a gold money market account.
You might receive a debit card that can draw on this gold account. When you buy goods or services, you could pay for them in gold, rather than in a paper currency. Naturally, governments don’t like this one bit. Any threat to the paper money monopoly must be crushed, by any means necessary. And the war against digital gold has now begun. Today, one of the first digital gold services, Nevis-based E-Gold, pleaded guilty in the United States to money laundering charges. It didn’t have much choice. As I described in a previous blog entry, in May 2007, the U.S. Department of Justice seized over US$11 million worth of gold held by Omnipay, E-gold’s payment system. The gold confiscated in this civil forfeiture had a then-market value exceeding US$11 million. (Today, a little more than a year later, the seized gold would be worth more than US$16 million. Which currency would you rather have?)
Naturally, the attack on E-Gold wasn’t couched in the terms that this kind of service is a frontal assault against increasingly depreciated national currencies. Instead, the indictment of E-gold painted a lurid picture of the system being used by child pornographers, identity thieves, and investment scams. Who knows? Maybe E-Gold was guilty as charged. But the E-Gold takedown is unquestionably a warning to other companies in this business that they might be next.
It should thus come as no surprise that one of the highest priorities of national “financial intelligence agencies” is to investigate the connection between digital gold services and (you guessed it) “terrorist financing.” In the United States, for instance, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is studying ways to “close the regulatory gap” surrounding digital gold currencies. Canada’s financial intelligence agency (FINTRAC) warns, “criminals may be exploiting Internet-based companies that convert cash into electronic gold, exposing a new front in the international effort to restrict terrorist financing and money laundering.”
So, there you have it. The stage is set for governments hooked on fiat currencies to try to quash this quiet revolution. You can do your part to make sure they don’t prevail by opening your own account at GoldMoney or a similar service. (For the record, I have no connection, financial or otherwise, to GoldMoney, other than knowing its founder, James Turk.)
GoldMoney, but the way, insists on the same type of documentation that a bank demands when you open an account. Obviously, it doesn’t want to suffer the same fate as E-Gold.
Mark recommends - http://www.sovereignsociety.com
I’m a “gold bug.” I distrust paper money of all kinds and am particularly suspicious of my own domestic currency, the U.S. dollar. Plenty of people share my antipathy toward the greenback. And it’s no surprise why. Measured in terms of gold, the dollar has lost more than 95% of its value in the last 100 years. Another way of looking at it is that during that period, the price of gold has increased more than 20 times in dollar terms—from an official price of $20.67/oz in 1908 to more than $900/oz today. With a record like that, you’d think no one would own U.S. dollars. But unfortunately, the U.S. government gives us few practical alternatives. Among other compulsory means, the government’s “legal tender” laws force us to accept dollars “for all debts public or private.”
However, the government’s monopoly on money is beginning to end. In the last decade, the Internet, combined with massive advances in data processing technology, has made it possible to own “digital gold,” through companies like GoldMoney.com. The basic idea couldn’t be simpler. You open an account with GoldMoney or similar service in much the same way as you do at a bank. But instead of holding dollars, the account holds gold. You can then use the gold in the account to pay other GoldMoney accountholders for goods or services they provide. Instead of having those goods or services priced in dollars, euros, or pesos, they’re priced in grams of gold. In return for facilitating the transaction, GoldMoney receives a small fee.
And, guess what? There’s no need for any government to intervene in the process. Indeed, services like GoldMoney are a seductive way of getting ordinary people accustomed to doing business outside the fiat money system. In the not-too-distant future, you may see the equivalent of a gold money market account.
You might receive a debit card that can draw on this gold account. When you buy goods or services, you could pay for them in gold, rather than in a paper currency. Naturally, governments don’t like this one bit. Any threat to the paper money monopoly must be crushed, by any means necessary. And the war against digital gold has now begun. Today, one of the first digital gold services, Nevis-based E-Gold, pleaded guilty in the United States to money laundering charges. It didn’t have much choice. As I described in a previous blog entry, in May 2007, the U.S. Department of Justice seized over US$11 million worth of gold held by Omnipay, E-gold’s payment system. The gold confiscated in this civil forfeiture had a then-market value exceeding US$11 million. (Today, a little more than a year later, the seized gold would be worth more than US$16 million. Which currency would you rather have?)
Naturally, the attack on E-Gold wasn’t couched in the terms that this kind of service is a frontal assault against increasingly depreciated national currencies. Instead, the indictment of E-gold painted a lurid picture of the system being used by child pornographers, identity thieves, and investment scams. Who knows? Maybe E-Gold was guilty as charged. But the E-Gold takedown is unquestionably a warning to other companies in this business that they might be next.
It should thus come as no surprise that one of the highest priorities of national “financial intelligence agencies” is to investigate the connection between digital gold services and (you guessed it) “terrorist financing.” In the United States, for instance, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is studying ways to “close the regulatory gap” surrounding digital gold currencies. Canada’s financial intelligence agency (FINTRAC) warns, “criminals may be exploiting Internet-based companies that convert cash into electronic gold, exposing a new front in the international effort to restrict terrorist financing and money laundering.”
So, there you have it. The stage is set for governments hooked on fiat currencies to try to quash this quiet revolution. You can do your part to make sure they don’t prevail by opening your own account at GoldMoney or a similar service. (For the record, I have no connection, financial or otherwise, to GoldMoney, other than knowing its founder, James Turk.)
GoldMoney, but the way, insists on the same type of documentation that a bank demands when you open an account. Obviously, it doesn’t want to suffer the same fate as E-Gold.
Mark recommends - http://www.sovereignsociety.com
GoldMoney - Bank of America Wire Transfers News
We are pleased to announce that with effect from Friday the 11th of July, all customers with a US bank account can wire funds to GoldMoney’s new cash collection account at Bank of America in New York. You are now able to transfer funds to GoldMoney using a domestic bank wire or other electronic transfer method rather than an international bank wire, which will significantly reduce the bank fees incurred and increase the efficiency of your funds transfer.
Please note that this new bank wire service is for incoming wires only. In other words, the collection account service provided by Bank of America through our bank, Lloyds TSB (UK), is a “one-way” service and may not be used to return funds to customers. When you instruct GoldMoney to send US dollar funds back to your US bank account, all wires will still be made from our bank account in Jersey.
http://alansmoneyblog.com/2008/07/12/goldmoney-opens-us-wire-collection-account/
Please note that this new bank wire service is for incoming wires only. In other words, the collection account service provided by Bank of America through our bank, Lloyds TSB (UK), is a “one-way” service and may not be used to return funds to customers. When you instruct GoldMoney to send US dollar funds back to your US bank account, all wires will still be made from our bank account in Jersey.
http://alansmoneyblog.com/2008/07/12/goldmoney-opens-us-wire-collection-account/
Gold Investment Summit (UK)
Tuesday, 4th November 2008, London
‘Gold Investment Summit’ is an investment conference that aims to link junior exploration, emerging & mid-tier gold producing companies plus expert keynote speakers & analysts with financial institutions, brokerage firms and corporate finance & investment houses involved in the resource & commodity markets - including Investment/Fund Managers, Brokers/Traders, Private-Client Managers, Financial Consultants, and Mining Equity Research Analysts, plus
existing Shareholders & astute Private Investors seeking an exceptional investment opportunity.
Join us for our inaugural day of gold conferencing, with presentations and discussions on gold mining companies, gold investments, the economy, commodity/money markets and the ‘bullish’ case for gold - in addition to an adjacent exhibitor area displaying quality gold mining companies with operations located around the world ! There will also be plenty of opportunity for one-to-one discussions with company executives .
Speakers throughout the day will include: James Turk, of GoldMoney.com and co-author of the book, “The Collapse Of The Dollar”; Paul Tustain, of Bullionvault.com and Editor of “Galmarley” plus presentations by CEO’s from exhibiting junior and mid-tier exploration, development, and gold producing mining companies. Why not also join us for our Silver Investment Summit on 5th November !
http://www.goldsummit.co.uk/index.htm
‘Gold Investment Summit’ is an investment conference that aims to link junior exploration, emerging & mid-tier gold producing companies plus expert keynote speakers & analysts with financial institutions, brokerage firms and corporate finance & investment houses involved in the resource & commodity markets - including Investment/Fund Managers, Brokers/Traders, Private-Client Managers, Financial Consultants, and Mining Equity Research Analysts, plus
existing Shareholders & astute Private Investors seeking an exceptional investment opportunity.
Join us for our inaugural day of gold conferencing, with presentations and discussions on gold mining companies, gold investments, the economy, commodity/money markets and the ‘bullish’ case for gold - in addition to an adjacent exhibitor area displaying quality gold mining companies with operations located around the world ! There will also be plenty of opportunity for one-to-one discussions with company executives .
Speakers throughout the day will include: James Turk, of GoldMoney.com and co-author of the book, “The Collapse Of The Dollar”; Paul Tustain, of Bullionvault.com and Editor of “Galmarley” plus presentations by CEO’s from exhibiting junior and mid-tier exploration, development, and gold producing mining companies. Why not also join us for our Silver Investment Summit on 5th November !
http://www.goldsummit.co.uk/index.htm
Commerce Gold (c-gold) Passes The 100,000 Transactions Mark
New multimillion dollar kid on the block c-gold just whizzed past the 100,000 customer transactions mark this month. Congratulations to Robert and team.
Headquartered in Penang, Malaysia, Commerce Gold allows any verified account holder to bail in bars and receive digital units through their Penang office location. Current holdings show circulation of 42534.37grams of digital gold. (over €800,000 euro)
* 35 kilos
* 12 - 500gram bars
* 1 - 100gram ingot
* 1 - 434.3700gram ingot
Their ‘holdings’ page always shows the daily balance. https://c-gold.com/holdings.php There are currently about 13,000 c-gold accounts open and around 4,000 of them are funded. From their web site:
"You cannot buy c-gold or fund your Holdings Account with any fiat currency from c-gold.com or the Operator.
The c-gold system is a closed book-entry system and you can only fund your account by either bailing in a gold bar, or by buying c-gold from someone who already has some in his or her Holdings Account. However, there are several independent exchangers who are offering c-gold for sale in exchange for other online currencies and/or for a wire transfer, bank deposit, etc."
C-gold is a very exciting new DGC and please note that in order to eliminate attempts to abuse the c-gold.com system each account requires verification of ownership through ID and utility bill scans.
Headquartered in Penang, Malaysia, Commerce Gold allows any verified account holder to bail in bars and receive digital units through their Penang office location. Current holdings show circulation of 42534.37grams of digital gold. (over €800,000 euro)
* 35 kilos
* 12 - 500gram bars
* 1 - 100gram ingot
* 1 - 434.3700gram ingot
Their ‘holdings’ page always shows the daily balance. https://c-gold.com/holdings.php There are currently about 13,000 c-gold accounts open and around 4,000 of them are funded. From their web site:
"You cannot buy c-gold or fund your Holdings Account with any fiat currency from c-gold.com or the Operator.
The c-gold system is a closed book-entry system and you can only fund your account by either bailing in a gold bar, or by buying c-gold from someone who already has some in his or her Holdings Account. However, there are several independent exchangers who are offering c-gold for sale in exchange for other online currencies and/or for a wire transfer, bank deposit, etc."
C-gold is a very exciting new DGC and please note that in order to eliminate attempts to abuse the c-gold.com system each account requires verification of ownership through ID and utility bill scans.
Sabtu, Juli 05, 2008
The Washington Post vs Webmoney Transfer
A recent Washington Post article
attempts to paint Webmoney Transfer,
a very successful global business, as
a recent entry into the online payments
marketplace for the specific purpose
of serving child porn users. Nothing
could be further from the truth.
“Duck, Cover and Roll-- Webmoney Digital
Currency is evil because the Washington
Post says so....!”
Brian Kreps wrote a article for the Washington
Post online yesterday. In a round-about-way
his article unfairly attempts to ‘demonize’
Webmoney Transfer by directly linking the multi
billion dollar a year company to illegal online
child pornography. The article wrongly depicts
Webmoney as a system that was recently
created to service users wishing to circumvent
US law. This is not true and nothing could be
further from the truth. Webmoney was created
almost a decade ago to serve the local Russian
market.
It is important to understand the global nature
of Internet Digital Currency.
--You can’t force the Internet world outside of
the United States to comply with the Patriot
Act.
--Other financial systems in far off nations were
not built around social security numbers and
credit ratings.
--Many entire foreign populations don’t use
credit cards.
--More people around the globe have cell
phones than have bank accounts.
The biggest outrage with the Washington Post
story in taking a ‘US only’ view of digital money, is
the vast ignorance shown by those who attempt
regulate and report such matters. Webmoney
Transfer is a non bank online payment solution
for Internet users. It is very popular, amazingly
convenient and it was created for people who
don’t have access to conventional banking or a
credit card.
The basic Webmoney account is called an
‘Alias’ account. It does not require ID or address
verification and it never has. For almost a
decade, Webmoney users have operated
‘Alias’ accounts. They are not new.
It is a safe & simple digital money account
which anyone can open and instantly use. It
was developed for the market in and around
Russia which is sometimes a region where
conventional banking is scarce and plastic does
not work. Webmoney Transfer, also works well
for that same user group all around the world.
The Webmoney ‘Alias’ account does NOT
require identification documents and users
have never needed a credit card, bank account
or Patriot Act approval to operate this handy
account.
This account structure or profile is how the
digital money world works outside the United
States, read on and learn.....it’s a rapidly
expanding universe and the Washington Post
won’t be able to marry child pornography to
every future successful online system.
Is Webmoney A Tool Of The Devil As
Washington Would Have You Think?
Webmoney is a practical solution to Internet
commerce.
Around the globe there are over 35,000 funding
locations, where anyone can add money to their
Webmoney account. That is...walk in with cash,
load your online account, no credit needed.
In and around Russia there are 150,000+ ATMs
and kiosks, about half of which are maintained
by a person, where anyone can walk up with
cash and instantly load their Webmoney
Account. Most of them are ATM type machine and cash feeds right into.
They have cash to digital funding partners
around the globe including CashU,
paysafecard and UKash. Consequently,
all over Europe, UK and the Middle East
verified Webmoney account holders can
fund their online accounts with cash through
one of these licensed and regulated payment
‘partners’
Webmoney Transfer is a fine solution for
non US users. This payment system was not
created in the United States, is it not Patriot
Act compliant & it does not require a credit
card to operate. God bless the Russians
for this global e-commerce solution. This is
a digital cash type system as are dozens
of other similar non-US online payment
solutions. It was created to fill a need and
operate outside the United States.
No US regulators are going to get away with
trying to tell the entire Internet world, “You
must comply with how we want things done
in the US.” Global regulation does NOT occur
that way.
Webmoney was born in Russia and created
for the average Russian person almost
a decade ago. It is a very popular and
successful system and much loved around
the world. The Washington Post, and the
Enquirer can publish all the stories they want
claiming Webmoney was created to service
crooks and child porn users, but the facts tell
us a different story. While I often enjoy Mr.
Kreb’s writing and have for years now, this
article is slanted to offer a very ignorant ‘US
Only’ view of the digital money world.
Webmoney DID NOT spring up last month in
order to better service child porn networks as
the Washington Post would have you think.
We have all heard the line, “Fool me once
shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.”
Well...in the past two years the press has
been very successful in fusing e-gold to child
porn but shame on the Washington Post for Russian
president, at the Russian Internet Forum RIF-
2008 in April, visiting with Peter Darakhvelidze,
Director of Webmoney Corporate Affairs.
That photo and the long successful operating
history of Webmoney Transfer doesn’t seem
to reflect the same attitude as the Washington
Post’s article.
Value transfer systems are becoming more
and more like cash and Washington will not
find solutions to the issues if they don’t even
understand the problem. Trying to persuade
the world, digital money is evil, by using the
local press is taking a blindfolded attempt at
regulating a global industry.
Brian, just for the record, Dr. Douglas Jackson
from e-gold was one of the original members
of the Financial Coalition Against Child
Pornography, it was not just formed by credit
card issuers.
Article by Mark Herpel
attempts to paint Webmoney Transfer,
a very successful global business, as
a recent entry into the online payments
marketplace for the specific purpose
of serving child porn users. Nothing
could be further from the truth.
“Duck, Cover and Roll-- Webmoney Digital
Currency is evil because the Washington
Post says so....!”
Brian Kreps wrote a article for the Washington
Post online yesterday. In a round-about-way
his article unfairly attempts to ‘demonize’
Webmoney Transfer by directly linking the multi
billion dollar a year company to illegal online
child pornography. The article wrongly depicts
Webmoney as a system that was recently
created to service users wishing to circumvent
US law. This is not true and nothing could be
further from the truth. Webmoney was created
almost a decade ago to serve the local Russian
market.
It is important to understand the global nature
of Internet Digital Currency.
--You can’t force the Internet world outside of
the United States to comply with the Patriot
Act.
--Other financial systems in far off nations were
not built around social security numbers and
credit ratings.
--Many entire foreign populations don’t use
credit cards.
--More people around the globe have cell
phones than have bank accounts.
The biggest outrage with the Washington Post
story in taking a ‘US only’ view of digital money, is
the vast ignorance shown by those who attempt
regulate and report such matters. Webmoney
Transfer is a non bank online payment solution
for Internet users. It is very popular, amazingly
convenient and it was created for people who
don’t have access to conventional banking or a
credit card.
The basic Webmoney account is called an
‘Alias’ account. It does not require ID or address
verification and it never has. For almost a
decade, Webmoney users have operated
‘Alias’ accounts. They are not new.
It is a safe & simple digital money account
which anyone can open and instantly use. It
was developed for the market in and around
Russia which is sometimes a region where
conventional banking is scarce and plastic does
not work. Webmoney Transfer, also works well
for that same user group all around the world.
The Webmoney ‘Alias’ account does NOT
require identification documents and users
have never needed a credit card, bank account
or Patriot Act approval to operate this handy
account.
This account structure or profile is how the
digital money world works outside the United
States, read on and learn.....it’s a rapidly
expanding universe and the Washington Post
won’t be able to marry child pornography to
every future successful online system.
Is Webmoney A Tool Of The Devil As
Washington Would Have You Think?
Webmoney is a practical solution to Internet
commerce.
Around the globe there are over 35,000 funding
locations, where anyone can add money to their
Webmoney account. That is...walk in with cash,
load your online account, no credit needed.
In and around Russia there are 150,000+ ATMs
and kiosks, about half of which are maintained
by a person, where anyone can walk up with
cash and instantly load their Webmoney
Account. Most of them are ATM type machine and cash feeds right into.
They have cash to digital funding partners
around the globe including CashU,
paysafecard and UKash. Consequently,
all over Europe, UK and the Middle East
verified Webmoney account holders can
fund their online accounts with cash through
one of these licensed and regulated payment
‘partners’
Webmoney Transfer is a fine solution for
non US users. This payment system was not
created in the United States, is it not Patriot
Act compliant & it does not require a credit
card to operate. God bless the Russians
for this global e-commerce solution. This is
a digital cash type system as are dozens
of other similar non-US online payment
solutions. It was created to fill a need and
operate outside the United States.
No US regulators are going to get away with
trying to tell the entire Internet world, “You
must comply with how we want things done
in the US.” Global regulation does NOT occur
that way.
Webmoney was born in Russia and created
for the average Russian person almost
a decade ago. It is a very popular and
successful system and much loved around
the world. The Washington Post, and the
Enquirer can publish all the stories they want
claiming Webmoney was created to service
crooks and child porn users, but the facts tell
us a different story. While I often enjoy Mr.
Kreb’s writing and have for years now, this
article is slanted to offer a very ignorant ‘US
Only’ view of the digital money world.
Webmoney DID NOT spring up last month in
order to better service child porn networks as
the Washington Post would have you think.
We have all heard the line, “Fool me once
shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.”
Well...in the past two years the press has
been very successful in fusing e-gold to child
porn but shame on the Washington Post for Russian
president, at the Russian Internet Forum RIF-
2008 in April, visiting with Peter Darakhvelidze,
Director of Webmoney Corporate Affairs.
That photo and the long successful operating
history of Webmoney Transfer doesn’t seem
to reflect the same attitude as the Washington
Post’s article.
Value transfer systems are becoming more
and more like cash and Washington will not
find solutions to the issues if they don’t even
understand the problem. Trying to persuade
the world, digital money is evil, by using the
local press is taking a blindfolded attempt at
regulating a global industry.
Brian, just for the record, Dr. Douglas Jackson
from e-gold was one of the original members
of the Financial Coalition Against Child
Pornography, it was not just formed by credit
card issuers.
Article by Mark Herpel
e-gold Primary Dealer
Ketika Anda login ke e-gold.com dan setelah berada didalamnya Anda mencoba mengklik "Redeem" maka akan muncul tulisan sebagai berikut:
Due to circumstances outside its control, e-gold Ltd is currently only able to extend the right of redemption to primary dealers. The process of becoming a primary dealer is by invitation only. If you desire to acquire some physical gold, please use the services of a bullion dealer. If, on the other hand, you need to exchange e-gold for a national currency, there are multiple independent exchange providers offering this service. Some of these are listed in the "Exchange Services" section of the e-gold Directory (see link from e-gold homepage).
If your primary interest in redeeming e-gold is to verify that e-gold is in fact 100% backed by physical gold in allocated storage, please see the recent audit report linked to from the e-gold Examiner page.
Tahukan Anda, siapakah yang ditunjuk oleh e-gold sebagai sebuah primary dealer?
Jawab:
Mr. Steve Renner pemilik CashCards.net.
From Steve Renner Cashcards.net:
Cash Cards is now the Primary Dealer for E-Gold.
We have been approved to Bail Bars of E-Gold
in and out of the system. So if you have a large
quantity of e-gold - 100 oz or more please contact
us for special “Out-Exchange” Rates!
Silahkan berkunjung ke websitenya.
Due to circumstances outside its control, e-gold Ltd is currently only able to extend the right of redemption to primary dealers. The process of becoming a primary dealer is by invitation only. If you desire to acquire some physical gold, please use the services of a bullion dealer. If, on the other hand, you need to exchange e-gold for a national currency, there are multiple independent exchange providers offering this service. Some of these are listed in the "Exchange Services" section of the e-gold Directory (see link from e-gold homepage).
If your primary interest in redeeming e-gold is to verify that e-gold is in fact 100% backed by physical gold in allocated storage, please see the recent audit report linked to from the e-gold Examiner page.
Tahukan Anda, siapakah yang ditunjuk oleh e-gold sebagai sebuah primary dealer?
Jawab:
Mr. Steve Renner pemilik CashCards.net.
From Steve Renner Cashcards.net:
Cash Cards is now the Primary Dealer for E-Gold.
We have been approved to Bail Bars of E-Gold
in and out of the system. So if you have a large
quantity of e-gold - 100 oz or more please contact
us for special “Out-Exchange” Rates!
Silahkan berkunjung ke websitenya.
Vietnam Has Suspended All Gold Imports
Concerns about the weak local currency and the falling USD are driving huge local demand for gold.
Vietnam’s communist government in Hanoi has just temporarily banned all gold imports into the country.
Hanoi has withdrawn licenses for any further imports of gold. This move is desperate attempt to control the country’s trade deficit and support the depreciating local currency (the ‘Dong’, no offense intended).
So far this year, Vietnam’s trade deficit has already tripled, local stock and real estate markets are dropping fast and consumer inflation is at 25% year on year.
For the first half of 2008, Vietnam has imported around 60 tonnes of gold valued at $1.8 billion USD which is a 100% increase over the same period in 2007. This record importing of gold bullion has now made Vietnam the world’s largest market for gold bullion which has also passed both India and China.
Last month in an effort to slow imports the government doubled the incoming duty on the yellow metal but it had no effect on demand. With their local currency dropping fast, this move to suspend all gold imports will cut domestic supplies and certainly send buyers scrambling for hard assets.
Article by Clarence W.
Vietnam’s communist government in Hanoi has just temporarily banned all gold imports into the country.
Hanoi has withdrawn licenses for any further imports of gold. This move is desperate attempt to control the country’s trade deficit and support the depreciating local currency (the ‘Dong’, no offense intended).
So far this year, Vietnam’s trade deficit has already tripled, local stock and real estate markets are dropping fast and consumer inflation is at 25% year on year.
For the first half of 2008, Vietnam has imported around 60 tonnes of gold valued at $1.8 billion USD which is a 100% increase over the same period in 2007. This record importing of gold bullion has now made Vietnam the world’s largest market for gold bullion which has also passed both India and China.
Last month in an effort to slow imports the government doubled the incoming duty on the yellow metal but it had no effect on demand. With their local currency dropping fast, this move to suspend all gold imports will cut domestic supplies and certainly send buyers scrambling for hard assets.
Article by Clarence W.
Minggu, Juni 15, 2008
Saudi Arabia Expands Local Gold Regulations To Fight Dirty Money
The Saudi Gazette is reporting that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has imposed strict new regulations to fight and prevent the possible use of gold, jewelry and precious stones in connection with money laundering or terror financing.
A leading daily pan-Arab newspaper, Al-Hayat, reported that,
“Individuals working at the Saudi gold and jewelry market have recently noted that
diamond and other precious stones may well be used for “bleaching” of money and for
finding inroads into financing terrorism. A number of tradesmen indicated that jewels are perfect choice for money laundering as they are both lightweight and expensive.”
The Ministry of Interior is now directing owners of gold and jewelry shops within the Kingdom to be on the watch for suspicious transactions and is requiring them to report such activity. Al-Hayat reported that a recent Royal Decree established the anti-money laundering regulation and new Financial Investigations Unit. The unit reports to the Assistant Minister of Interior for Security Affairs and is directly involved with analyzing data and of reporting all suspicious transactions at all financial and non-financial institutions.
Source:
http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.
regcon&contentID=200805267527
A leading daily pan-Arab newspaper, Al-Hayat, reported that,
“Individuals working at the Saudi gold and jewelry market have recently noted that
diamond and other precious stones may well be used for “bleaching” of money and for
finding inroads into financing terrorism. A number of tradesmen indicated that jewels are perfect choice for money laundering as they are both lightweight and expensive.”
The Ministry of Interior is now directing owners of gold and jewelry shops within the Kingdom to be on the watch for suspicious transactions and is requiring them to report such activity. Al-Hayat reported that a recent Royal Decree established the anti-money laundering regulation and new Financial Investigations Unit. The unit reports to the Assistant Minister of Interior for Security Affairs and is directly involved with analyzing data and of reporting all suspicious transactions at all financial and non-financial institutions.
Source:
http://www.saudigazette.com.sa/index.cfm?method=home.
regcon&contentID=200805267527
Malaysian Islamic Finance Scholar Advocates Using Digital Gold
‘Bakar did advocate the use of gold being used as a means of exchange in a virtual
transaction’
Malaysian Islamic finance scholar Mohammed Daud Bakar spoke this month at the International Islamic Finance Forum in Dubai along side Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus.
Bakar spoke about his views regarding the “gold standard” being used as medium of exchange in the Islamic world today.
“I don’t believe in the gold standard for currency,” said Bakar. “For me it’s not practical... there could even be wars over gold - it’s just creating another issue.” However, Bakar did advocate the use of gold being used as a means of exchange in a virtual transaction, as is currently done by sites such as www.e-gold.com and www.igdexchange.com
It was just a brief sentence in a recent issue of ArabianBusiness.com but a very powerful statement about the global nature of the world in which we now live.
Although the article’s focus was centered around the still controversial issue of a, “...universal financial standard which is Sharia compliant”, after
seeing the e-gold domain mentioned, its easy to understand how trade between different countries, different languages, currencies or religions can all
be connected through the one common denominator
- GOLD.
Source: http://www.arabianbusiness.
com/516581-scholar-urges-islamic-finance-standardisation
Article by Alen Smithee
transaction’
Malaysian Islamic finance scholar Mohammed Daud Bakar spoke this month at the International Islamic Finance Forum in Dubai along side Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus.
Bakar spoke about his views regarding the “gold standard” being used as medium of exchange in the Islamic world today.
“I don’t believe in the gold standard for currency,” said Bakar. “For me it’s not practical... there could even be wars over gold - it’s just creating another issue.” However, Bakar did advocate the use of gold being used as a means of exchange in a virtual transaction, as is currently done by sites such as www.e-gold.com and www.igdexchange.com
It was just a brief sentence in a recent issue of ArabianBusiness.com but a very powerful statement about the global nature of the world in which we now live.
Although the article’s focus was centered around the still controversial issue of a, “...universal financial standard which is Sharia compliant”, after
seeing the e-gold domain mentioned, its easy to understand how trade between different countries, different languages, currencies or religions can all
be connected through the one common denominator
- GOLD.
Source: http://www.arabianbusiness.
com/516581-scholar-urges-islamic-finance-standardisation
Article by Alen Smithee
Beberapa pendapat pakar tentang gold dan ekonomi.
Dr. Edwin Vieira Jr., The Foremost
Authority in the United States on
Constitutional Money
• Only a return to Gold and Silver
can stabilize our currency.
• Desperate people start to
ask questions, and shortly
thereafter that, assign blame. If
our politicians want a long and
successful career ( or life ) they
should be aware of this.
Reginald Howe, Golden Sextant Advisors
LLC
• Out of all commodities, gold is the
one best suited for use as money
• The ‘gold price’, should actually be
termed ‘exchange rate’ as with all
currencies • Central Banks are now lending
gold at negative lease rates,
effectively paying institutions to
sell gold into the market
• Since the day the gold window
has been closed, the Supreme
Court has refused to hear any case
challenging the current monetary
system.
James Turk, Goldmoney
• The Chinese are indeed buying
gold, using intermediaries and
proxies to do so
• Chinese Proverb: Wisdom begins
by calling a thing its proper name.
Gold is not an investment, it is
money.
• Do not put dollars into gold
expecting a return, expect
preservation of purchasing power.
To get a return, it implies there
must be a risk, and gold has held
its purchasing power better than
anything else in history.
• We are looking at huge problems,
possibly as soon as this summer.
• Be prepared for Capital Controls in
the US soon.
Peter George, Trinity Asset Management
• Many hedge funds are having
liquidity issues right now, when
they see a bid, they are hitting it.
• It will take 10 years to bring new
ultra-deep mining operations at
5000meters or deeper online.
• Since 1994 virtually all commodities
have gone vertical and pulled away
from gold.
• Goldfields has the largest unhedged
position in the WITS Basin,
which holds an approximately 40,000 more tons of gold.
• Anglogold Ashanti is hedged
$7Billion
• Barrick is hedged $9Billion
• Oil will go to $500 a barrel in time.
Adrian Douglas, Market Force Analysis
• Gold is the investment opportunity of a lifetime.
John Embry, Sprott Asset Management
• This is the best opportunity I have
seen in 45 years in the investment business.
Authority in the United States on
Constitutional Money
• Only a return to Gold and Silver
can stabilize our currency.
• Desperate people start to
ask questions, and shortly
thereafter that, assign blame. If
our politicians want a long and
successful career ( or life ) they
should be aware of this.
Reginald Howe, Golden Sextant Advisors
LLC
• Out of all commodities, gold is the
one best suited for use as money
• The ‘gold price’, should actually be
termed ‘exchange rate’ as with all
currencies • Central Banks are now lending
gold at negative lease rates,
effectively paying institutions to
sell gold into the market
• Since the day the gold window
has been closed, the Supreme
Court has refused to hear any case
challenging the current monetary
system.
James Turk, Goldmoney
• The Chinese are indeed buying
gold, using intermediaries and
proxies to do so
• Chinese Proverb: Wisdom begins
by calling a thing its proper name.
Gold is not an investment, it is
money.
• Do not put dollars into gold
expecting a return, expect
preservation of purchasing power.
To get a return, it implies there
must be a risk, and gold has held
its purchasing power better than
anything else in history.
• We are looking at huge problems,
possibly as soon as this summer.
• Be prepared for Capital Controls in
the US soon.
Peter George, Trinity Asset Management
• Many hedge funds are having
liquidity issues right now, when
they see a bid, they are hitting it.
• It will take 10 years to bring new
ultra-deep mining operations at
5000meters or deeper online.
• Since 1994 virtually all commodities
have gone vertical and pulled away
from gold.
• Goldfields has the largest unhedged
position in the WITS Basin,
which holds an approximately 40,000 more tons of gold.
• Anglogold Ashanti is hedged
$7Billion
• Barrick is hedged $9Billion
• Oil will go to $500 a barrel in time.
Adrian Douglas, Market Force Analysis
• Gold is the investment opportunity of a lifetime.
John Embry, Sprott Asset Management
• This is the best opportunity I have
seen in 45 years in the investment business.
DGC Users Buy VirtuCards For Online Credit Card Transactions
Doing business online using digital gold currency is the ultimate in convenience and low fees. Consequently, it is safe to conclude that the majority of DGC users do not have a wallet full of credit cards.
However since more than 80% of all online transactions are paid for with a CC, the average DGC user will eventually end up on a web site that does not accept digital currency. At some point in the next 12 months, it is a reality, that you will surf
to a store that only accepts credit and not gold. Shoppers finding themselves in this dilemma, have and easy and very popular product to which allows them a ‘work around’ and will quickly and painlessly complete their purchase. This is a product which can enable any DGC user with the ability to complete online credit card transactions.
These smart online shopper use their digital gold and purchase a prepaid virtual credit credit and use it just for that transaction. There are several good companies online that offer this virtual card product. Here is one which has proven to be a
good product in past years.
VirtuCard (http://www.unlinq.com)
“unlinQ provides consumers and businesses
with novel payment alternatives tailored to
meet their evolving needs.”
Unlinq sells the VirtuCard, which is a virtual credit card, issued from a US bank that can easily be used for online shopping, Internet Credit Card payments or identity verification on account set ups like PayPal, eBay, Moneybookers etc. Unlike
a plastic CC, with VirtuCard there is no physical card so there’s no issuance fee. Users pay only for the funding fee and those amounts are very reasonable.
This VirtuCard has an awesome feature not found on many other card products. With VirtuCard users can avoid any ‘card breakage’. The VirtuCard holder specifies the exact amount to be funded or reloaded. There are no present funding options like $50, $100 or $500 as most other cards offer. You no longer have to scour the Internet for
that $7.54 dollar item to buy so you can use up your left over prepaid card balance. Any available unused balance can be refunded directly to the
cardholder upon request. If you request the funds back, there is never an oddball amount left over on theVirtuCard. These features offer much more flexibility than other prepaid card products and they accept digital gold for purchase and reload
funding.
Shortly after you make a VirtuCard purchase, the card number including the CVV are delivered to you by email. Plug in any US address.
Pay for your VurtuCard purchase with Pecunix, C-gold, e-gold or eCache.
However since more than 80% of all online transactions are paid for with a CC, the average DGC user will eventually end up on a web site that does not accept digital currency. At some point in the next 12 months, it is a reality, that you will surf
to a store that only accepts credit and not gold. Shoppers finding themselves in this dilemma, have and easy and very popular product to which allows them a ‘work around’ and will quickly and painlessly complete their purchase. This is a product which can enable any DGC user with the ability to complete online credit card transactions.
These smart online shopper use their digital gold and purchase a prepaid virtual credit credit and use it just for that transaction. There are several good companies online that offer this virtual card product. Here is one which has proven to be a
good product in past years.
VirtuCard (http://www.unlinq.com)
“unlinQ provides consumers and businesses
with novel payment alternatives tailored to
meet their evolving needs.”
Unlinq sells the VirtuCard, which is a virtual credit card, issued from a US bank that can easily be used for online shopping, Internet Credit Card payments or identity verification on account set ups like PayPal, eBay, Moneybookers etc. Unlike
a plastic CC, with VirtuCard there is no physical card so there’s no issuance fee. Users pay only for the funding fee and those amounts are very reasonable.
This VirtuCard has an awesome feature not found on many other card products. With VirtuCard users can avoid any ‘card breakage’. The VirtuCard holder specifies the exact amount to be funded or reloaded. There are no present funding options like $50, $100 or $500 as most other cards offer. You no longer have to scour the Internet for
that $7.54 dollar item to buy so you can use up your left over prepaid card balance. Any available unused balance can be refunded directly to the
cardholder upon request. If you request the funds back, there is never an oddball amount left over on theVirtuCard. These features offer much more flexibility than other prepaid card products and they accept digital gold for purchase and reload
funding.
Shortly after you make a VirtuCard purchase, the card number including the CVV are delivered to you by email. Plug in any US address.
Pay for your VurtuCard purchase with Pecunix, C-gold, e-gold or eCache.
India Begins Trading An 8 Gram Gold Coin Futures Contract
The Multi Commodity Exchange of India (MCX), the country’s largest commodity bourse, has just launched gold coin futures contracts. Each gold coin weighs just 8 grams!
The Gold Guinea contract will be initially available for delivery in July and August 2008. The contract will be the first of its kind in the country available for retail investors. Maximum order size would be 10 kg with tick size (minimum price movement) of Re 1 per eight grams. The coins will be benchmarked to prices in the Ahmedabad market (inclusive of import duty and excluding sales tax, value-added tax (VAT), octroi and other surcharges).
The contracts have seven delivery centers including Ahmedabad New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata. India’s gold coins market is growing at a rapid pace, with more Indians choosing to invest in gold bullion form rather than jewelry. The quality specifications are 995 purity and it should be serially-numbered gold guinea supplied by LBMA-approved suppliers or other suppliers as may be approved by MCX, to be submitted along with suppliers quality certificate.
In 2007, India’s gold demand for investment grew by 10 percent to 215.4 tonnes compared with 195.7 tonnes in 2006, while jewelry demand grew by 6 percent to 558.2 tonnes compared with 526.2 tonnes in 2006, data from World Gold Council shows. According to industry estimates, all of India’s 700 tonnes of annual gold requirements are imported making the local price of the metal vulnerable to the exchange rate. India, the world’s biggest user of gold.
Article by Alan Smithee
The Gold Guinea contract will be initially available for delivery in July and August 2008. The contract will be the first of its kind in the country available for retail investors. Maximum order size would be 10 kg with tick size (minimum price movement) of Re 1 per eight grams. The coins will be benchmarked to prices in the Ahmedabad market (inclusive of import duty and excluding sales tax, value-added tax (VAT), octroi and other surcharges).
The contracts have seven delivery centers including Ahmedabad New Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata. India’s gold coins market is growing at a rapid pace, with more Indians choosing to invest in gold bullion form rather than jewelry. The quality specifications are 995 purity and it should be serially-numbered gold guinea supplied by LBMA-approved suppliers or other suppliers as may be approved by MCX, to be submitted along with suppliers quality certificate.
In 2007, India’s gold demand for investment grew by 10 percent to 215.4 tonnes compared with 195.7 tonnes in 2006, while jewelry demand grew by 6 percent to 558.2 tonnes compared with 526.2 tonnes in 2006, data from World Gold Council shows. According to industry estimates, all of India’s 700 tonnes of annual gold requirements are imported making the local price of the metal vulnerable to the exchange rate. India, the world’s biggest user of gold.
Article by Alan Smithee
Tentang e-dinar
What is e-dinar?
e-dinar is an exchange system enabling the
electronic transfer of gold and silver between
accounts. e-dinar and e-dirham are 100%
backed by physical gold and silver.
A quantity of e-dinar / e-dirham constitutes title
to a precise weight of this physical gold/silver.
e-dinar FZ-LLC is a Dubai Corporation which
operates the e-dinar system.
The primary function of the e-dinar system
is to render payments, in gold (e-dinar) and
silver (e-dirham), from one customer account
to another. A secure, convenient interface is
provided for customer entry of transaction orders.
All cleared transactions entail an increment or
decrement of one’s e-dinar / e-dirham balance.
The system calculates exactly how much metal
belongs to each particular customer.
All gold and silver is held free of lien or
encumbrance. e-dinar does not engage in future
contracts or any form of leveraged derivatives.
e-dinar is an exchange system enabling the
electronic transfer of gold and silver between
accounts. e-dinar and e-dirham are 100%
backed by physical gold and silver.
A quantity of e-dinar / e-dirham constitutes title
to a precise weight of this physical gold/silver.
e-dinar FZ-LLC is a Dubai Corporation which
operates the e-dinar system.
The primary function of the e-dinar system
is to render payments, in gold (e-dinar) and
silver (e-dirham), from one customer account
to another. A secure, convenient interface is
provided for customer entry of transaction orders.
All cleared transactions entail an increment or
decrement of one’s e-dinar / e-dirham balance.
The system calculates exactly how much metal
belongs to each particular customer.
All gold and silver is held free of lien or
encumbrance. e-dinar does not engage in future
contracts or any form of leveraged derivatives.
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