-- James A. Donald:
Every atom of gold is identical to every other atom of gold. There is only one stable isotope.
E-gold does not provide untraceability -- but gold does.
Tim May:
Where tax authorities get people is in the transfer _in to_ and _out of_ certain kinds of accounts, be they Cayman Island or Swiss bank accounts, whatever. The issue with opening a Swiss bank account and wiring money into it, or depositing Federal Reserve Notes into it has NOTHING to do with FRNs having serial numbers and hence being traceable. The issue is with their own reporting to the IRS (these days) and to stops in place to stop the wiring of said money or the transport of said FRNs.
The fact that you need a lot of ID to open a swiss bank account, and very little ID to open a pecunix account ultimately has everything to do with transport of FRNs
What *form* the "item of value" is inside the bank, be it gold bars or Spanish doubloons or stacks of $20 bills or diamonds, is unimportant.
Bank accounts have value because this stuff gets moved between the outside and the the inside of the bank. When it gets moved between inside and outside, the form matters.
In fact, for all intents and purposes the "item of value" inside the bank can be marks in a ledger book, which is effectively the situation today.
And the ultimate holder of those marks is the federal reserve -- whereupon you are screwed. Reality is that you can do stuff with a gold demoninated account that you cannot do with a federal reserve dollar demoninated account, and you really should ask yourself: Why is it so? Indeed, you can do stuff with an australian dollar demoninated account that you cannot do with a federal reserve dollar demoninated account, which may explain why so many internet gold currency dealers are located in Australia.
That some of the gold fetishists here keep perpetuating this deep misunderstanding of the issues is...unsurprising.
Reality is that gold denominated accounts are different. Observe this difference, then ask yourself why is it so. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG dgc/6bEVNysFdnfP7WNdUlY88c0N8EW4FpSJGCgs 4UbJQQDrpPXxtyBvHRcTPi2GBXEeVul6XkRQScePv