e-gold

[R.A. Hettinga]

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At 5:32 PM -0400 10/20/04, Somebody wrote:
>How much do you know about the e-gold crew? I've sent them a couple
>of queries and I've gotten answers back that haven't been very
>pleasing.

The short story is that they're a
Jesus-is-coming-and-boy-is-he-pissed pre-millennium gold transaction
startup, and the millennium came and went sans datequake and/or
rapture. Good news is they're good businessmen after all, they're
making money, and they've honored their internet transactions for
more than a dozen years. They even pre-date the commercial net by a
few years. Bad news is when they ever do go sideways one of the
partners is a tax-lawyer from, er, heck, (the money partner is an
oncologist; they met in a bible-study class... not, um, the end of
the world, Rockefeller was a bible-thumping baptist, remember...) and
the russian-doll puzzle of domiciles subsidiaries and governance
documents goes through about six countries including Nevis, Bermunda,
etc., not to mention separate gold depository accounts around the
world.

The long story is, well, long. I trust 'em to do the gold
transactions. It's not cheap, though. It's gold, it needs to be
stored, and there are storage charges. You need a currency-exchange
provider, to get money into and out of the system. The ones I like
most are ice-gold <http://www.icegold.com>, in, of all places,
Estonia (Latvia???). Jim Ray  <jray at free-market.net>, a former
cypherpunk, is a good guy, and e-gold's original internet evangelist,
and has been with them for about 10 years.

Another reputable gold-transaction outfit is Goldmoney
<http://www.goldmoney.com>. They're just plain-old-fashioned
gold-bugs from the old school. You know, a financial calamity around
the corner but it's okay, because we're gonna get rich. :-).
Seriously, James Turk, the founder there has been a gold bug since
the heyday of the Oil Embargo. He used to work at Citibank in the far
east, back in the day. And, instead of down in Florida somewhere as
it is for E-Gold, GoldMoney's office is in midtown, even if the
gold's at ViaMAT in London and the domicile's the Channel Islands,
Jersey, I think. Turk's been in the gold bug business so long that he
*patented* the whole idea of electronic gold transactions way back
when, submarined it until e-gold was hauling it down, and is now
collecting royalties.

Of course, you know me. I'm not much into the whole
commodities-as-money thing, I'd rather do bearer forms of
depository-held collateral, like, say, dollars -- or the S&P. :-).


So, what kind of problems are you having?

Cheers,
RAH

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-- 
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R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah at ibuc.com>
The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'