More Convenient Use of Electronic Gold Payments

[Jim Davidson]

Dear Bill,

First, let me thank you for your excellent message.  I've copied
a few people on bcc and I've included support at goldage.net since
your endorsement of their excellent services is one I'm sure they
would appreciate.

> I've used E-Gold in the past, and found that the hardest part
> of the process is buying the stuff to put in your account -
> setting up an account and paying people with it are both easy,
> but to buy the gold, you need to find some way to give somebody
> some other kind of money so they'll give you electronic gold.

There are a number of decent exchange providers both foreign
and domestic.  You mention one that is very good, goldage.net.
Others that I like to work with are Cambist.net and EzEz.com.
In this latter case, qualified individuals simply write a check
or send a money order to EzEz's parent company and get e-gold
within hours after the mail arrives.  Cambist has a service
called MerchantGold which allows merchants to have payments sent
in and receive their funds in e-gold or other online gold.

> If you want $10000 worth, or want to transfer physical gold,
> it's not hard, but if you just want small quantities it was annoying.

Everyone's experiences differ.  I certainly have had no difficulty
getting small quantities of gold, buying or selling.

> Jim Davidson's article talked about E-Gold and other currencies,
> and almost all of them operate under a model in which
> the gold service transfers gold credits between accounts,
> but buying the gold credits with other types of money
> is handled by third-party retailers, and almost none of the retailers
> will accept credit cards or Paypal without long delays,
> though they'll happily accept other gold currencies.

There are retailers who accept credit cards.  GoldNow.st works
with these quite often, though their rates are pretty high and I
don't have much else good to say about them.  Nobody wants to
accept PayPal, even from known customers, because PayPal has had
a policy of shutting down exchanger accounts.  It has happened so
many times that I've lost track.  There is an interesting essay
on the subject, actually a set of essays, about the "May Scale
of Monetary Hardness" which helps to explain why it is so hard
to buy gold or silver with credit cards or PayPal.
http://www.interestingsoftware.com/mayscale.html

PayPal happens to have survived whereas beenz and flooz and other
experiments in online payments have failed.  I think the relationship
between PayPal and eBay has much to do with that survival.  I do
sometimes wonder if the persistent difficulties of merchants and
consumers with PayPal may ultimately threaten its existence.  The
typical "out" which I'm anticipating is for PayPal to demand that
online payment systems be regulated.  PayPal would then likely
dominate the regulatory agency through the typical revolving door
and campaign contribution forms of corruption, in my estimation.

> There's now a much more convenient way to buy online gold - 
> goldage.net.

Yes, that's certainly true.  They are very convenient.

> They seem to be a small operation, so they're very responsive to email.

GoldAge.net was founded by my great friend Parker Bradley who has
gone off to New Mexico to run Heron Aerospace.  It is now managed
by a small and very competent team of friends in New York.  One of
them, Ragnar, is also responsible for LibertyImpact.com which is a
great little newsletter on liberty topics.

> I didn't want to use E-Gold itself, because there are too many
> spammers phishing for people's e-gold account information

True.  E-gold also keeps its servers in the USA, so you have to
expect that all transaction records are in the hands of government
agencies now, or will be as soon as a subpoena is issued.  (Great
news: the "National Security Letter" has been effectively challenged
in the courts.)

> Pecunix was one of the gold currencies that my merchant's
> online payment system Goldcart accepted, and they were easy to use.

Pecunix is truly excellent, I feel.  You can set up the Pecunix
log-in to require a PGP message test/response.  You can also set
it so that all your communications from Pecunix about your account
activities are received in PGP encrypted form.  Their log-in system
is a very tough hack, and I've never heard of anyone losing their
log-in details or account balance.  Also, the automation interface
for Pecunix is outstanding.  GoldCart, by the way, is from the
same programming team that handles Pecunix, PVCSE.com, and Garzoo.com.

> So I did the online form at Goldage, deposited the cash at the bank,
> checked Pecunix a couple of days later, and paid the merchant.
> I think the total fees were about $6-7 between the different
> service providers, mostly the $5 minimum fee at Goldage,
> and I may have a buck or two of round-off-error money sitting in 
> Pecunix,
> but the percentage costs would be lower if I were using it more 
> frequently
> rather than a one-shot transaction.

Sure.  I think the network of exchangers, of which GoldAge.net is
certainly a leader, is making it easier and easier for people to
abandon the banking system and handle nearly all their activities
with online payment systems.  These systems provide enhanced privacy
and a great deal of convenience.

> It worked very well, and was much simpler than a few years ago.

Indeed.

Regards,

Jim
  http://indomitus.net/