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1. E-Gold
2. Evo Cash
3. NetPay
4. PayByGold etc.

Also see The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe ( ". . . inspecting the global underbelly: privacy, money laundering, espionage.") for more info

In the last couple of months there have been an increasing amount of very sophisticated email scams.

For instance, E-Gold members (and others) have been receiving emails like this

Dear e-gold user.

At 09.05.2003 our company was attacked by unknown
persons. Out administrators is working on the database restoring.
If you have an active account, please check if it is still active, your
current balance is right and all transactions can be processed.
If you find that your account is inactive, please letus know
immediately at e-mail service@e-gold.com
To check your account, please click on the link below:
https://e-gold.com/sci_asp/payments.asp

It looks official, doesn't it? And the link looks ok too. But it is an html email, and the actual link went to a page located at e-gold2.com, which looked exactly like the real e-gold site. Thus the fraudsters were able to get peoples log-on details. More here.

In the UK, many people have been receiving emails that look as if they are from Barclays bank (one of the biggest in the UK). It is a similar scam to the e-gold one. More here.

I myself have recieved and email asking me to update my ebay account details. Only on close inspection did I realise that it was a fraud.

I find this extremely worrying. Personally I am probably like many Slashdotters - paranoid about security and difficult to catch out. However most people aren't like that, and this new type of scam email is an extremely worrying development, because it could catch a lot of people out. People really need to be informed about this type of scam, but I've yet to see much in the press about it. Any journalists reading..?

Making money on micropayments isn't easy, by definition. Here's an article from Wired about them.

Apparently, Bitpass merchants pay a transaction fee of 15 percent for items under $5 and 5 percent plus 50 cents for more expensive things. e-gold fees are a 1%/year storage fee and up to 1% of the transaction amount, with a maximum of 50 cents (US$) worth of metal for their fee, no matter how large the transaction.

Of course, the ability to do micropayments (or macropayments, for that matter) is hardly new -- e-gold has been around since 1996 and the e-gold shopping cart has been relatively-easy since http://sci.e-gold.com came along in mid-2000. I just wish more folks would try/use it. (Want to play with a bit? Ask me!)
JMR

Making money on micropayments isn't easy, by definition. Here's an article from Wired about them.

Apparently, Bitpass merchants pay a transaction fee of 15 percent for items under $5 and 5 percent plus 50 cents for more expensive things. e-gold fees are a 1%/year storage fee and up to 1% of the transaction amount, with a maximum of 50 cents (US$) worth of metal for their fee, no matter how large the transaction.

Of course, the ability to do micropayments (or macropayments, for that matter) is hardly new -- e-gold has been around since 1996 and the e-gold shopping cart has been relatively-easy since http://sci.e-gold.com came along in mid-2000. I just wish more folks would try/use it. (Want to play with a bit? Ask me!)
JMR

Most of my transactions are bigger than micro but not all.

Anyway to show one good use of micropayments I will pay the first 10 people to mod me up, advise me of your e-gold account number (and if you have 1mdc the initials for the account), allow me time to pay you, I am working and on the road.

Here is a freebie to get you started...

I have another interest in anonymous money, but that is another subject, if interested google should show my interests or if your even slacker, email me.

There are already TWO viable online payment systems that support extremely cheap micropayments: e-gold and Pecunix.com . E-Gold does on average USD $2.5 million per DAY in transactions, and 65% of them are for LESS THAN ONE DOLLAR!!! Check the stats for yourself on the stats page. Also, for an in-depth article on digital currency transaction systems that currently support cheap micropayments check out this article at www.goldeconomy.com.

E-gold and the half-a-dozen or so clones of that system work quite well, *if* you're dealing with a userbase which already have accounts.

(E-gold, for those who are unfamiliar, consists of 1,500 Kg of gold in various depositories, and a database for keeping track of who owns which fraction of that gold. As currency enters or leaves the system new gold is bought on the open market, or liquidated from the reserves: i.e. it's a real currency, just like the dollar used to be)

Payments are possible down to 0.3 of a cent, and the system has been around for years.

Given that this technology has been around for years and works exactly as a micropayment system should, this raises two questions about why it isn't everywhere:

1> Can a micropayment system work at all? Given this system has all of the necessary properties, and isn't used universally for micropayments, is the model just broken?

(actually: I just checked the E-gold system statistics and it looks like they moved 22000 transactions for less than 10 cents yesterday alone so perhaps that counts as a functioning micropayments system? But if it works just fine, what's limiting it's growth?

2> Is it possible that any micropayment system needs to be universal before it can be used? Even though there have been various past and current schemes which were technologically feasible, does it require a PayPal-sized entity to start offering micropayments before there is enough of a userbase to make it feasible to charge for things?

$0.02, no pun intended

E-gold and the half-a-dozen or so clones of that system work quite well, *if* you're dealing with a userbase which already have accounts.

(E-gold, for those who are unfamiliar, consists of 1,500 Kg of gold in various depositories, and a database for keeping track of who owns which fraction of that gold. As currency enters or leaves the system new gold is bought on the open market, or liquidated from the reserves: i.e. it's a real currency, just like the dollar used to be)

Payments are possible down to 0.3 of a cent, and the system has been around for years.

Given that this technology has been around for years and works exactly as a micropayment system should, this raises two questions about why it isn't everywhere:

1> Can a micropayment system work at all? Given this system has all of the necessary properties, and isn't used universally for micropayments, is the model just broken?

(actually: I just checked the E-gold system statistics and it looks like they moved 22000 transactions for less than 10 cents yesterday alone so perhaps that counts as a functioning micropayments system? But if it works just fine, what's limiting it's growth?

2> Is it possible that any micropayment system needs to be universal before it can be used? Even though there have been various past and current schemes which were technologically feasible, does it require a PayPal-sized entity to start offering micropayments before there is enough of a userbase to make it feasible to charge for things?

$0.02, no pun intended

E-gold works wonders. Pay any weight of gold, silver, platinum or palladium, all backed in real life by metal. You own the real metal and a payment is just a transfer of ownership. You don't even have to pay by weight, you can say $100USD worth of e-gold.

Been running for years, working really well, the only thing is the slow adoption rate and the fees. When (or if) this reaches critical mass it will be the best of all the options.

This is how i pay for my hosting and brought my domain name, not no mention a few other things.

e-gold

And other e-currency thingies...

by systems like e-gold.com, e-bullion.com, pecunix.com etc.

These payment systems are worldwide, do not suffer the chargeback problem, and seem to be fine with gambling and adult sites. They are also not linked to any particular national currency so should appeal to more libertarian among us.

Example: Wanna gamble now with them?

any of the gold based systems. for example e-gold.com (800,000+ account holders, averaging ~1-2 million USD plus in transactions per day, fee for a 25 cent transaction is .25 cents worth of gold).

see a comparison of 8 of these type of systems here.

how hard is it to accept 25 cents worth of gold?
click 100998-USD.25.e-gold.com to pay .25 worth of gold.

any of the gold based systems. for example e-gold.com (800,000+ account holders, averaging ~1-2 million USD plus in transactions per day, fee for a 25 cent transaction is .25 cents worth of gold).

see a comparison of 8 of these type of systems here.

how hard is it to accept 25 cents worth of gold?
click 100998-USD.25.e-gold.com to pay .25 worth of gold.

Use e-gold. You can accept payments having a link like http://123456.e-gold.com on your web page.

Even the value of gold fluctuates. I find it interesting that services like e-gold have "alchemy" clauses in their user agreements:

4.8. The Fusion Codicil

Issuer reserves the right to stop issuing additional e-gold by ceasing to accept bailment of additional bullion. This extraordinary provision will be triggered only in the event that lower cost or more efficient physical methods of extraction or transmuting the metals that comprise the reserves of the e-gold system result in subsequent non-scarcity of those elements.

I would tend to agree with your assertion, that unless users are specifically denied the right to transfer ownership of their virtual property, then why not? But that doesn't address the reality that the virtual objects exist at the whim of the operator of the virtual world.

This is not like a governmental entity that merely interjects itself between the affairs of an already existing economy. The operator of the virtual world *is* the creator of it, and is able to control or alter the value, nay the existence even, of anything within. How can users claim the right to prevent him/her from doing so unless the terms of the virtual world are pre-arranged and the rights of property are granted by the operator?

E-gold or Goldmoney are payment systems based on transfers of ownership of real physical gold, denominated by mass. Goldmoney scales down to 0.001g (which is worth just over one US cent at todays wartime-high gold prices) and all the way up to infinity. E-gold scales up likewise to infinity and down further (to about 4/100 of a cent at todays prices), and has an e-silver version if you want to go yet smaller.

At e-gold, an "Audible Turing Number" is provided for visually impaired users on each page presenting a Turing Number for user entry.

Most of these fake "escrow" sites seem to have some connection to E-Gold. E-gold itself is suspicious; they insist that their users release them from liability, and they seem to be incorporated in the Bahamas. Real financial services do not ask their customers to sign indemnification agreements or to relieve them from liability. If you see an indemnification clause in any financial service agreement, do not agree . Go elsewhere.

The idea of completly electronic money seems to me is every bit as flawed as the fiat we use in day to day transactions, in the sense that there are no direct limits on how much money is generated.

When there are entities generating money out of nothing like the Fed, and engaging in fractional reserve banking, like regular banks, it forces normal people to speculate in order to preserve the value of their savings. When gold was used as money, money preserve its value and there had been little net inflation over the thousands of years that gold and silver were used as money.

Therefore it's better to migrate to some more stable alternatives that are 100% backed by gold. These currencies exist and can be used to buy anything that can be paid with a credit card.

Such as:
ebullion
egold

e-gold is still going strong. Just like in Cryptonomicon, only without quite so many stupendous badasses.

As the dotcom boom hits bottom you look around and notice that fewer and fewer services have competitors anymore. That's the way it has become in on-line payments. There are a couple of alternatives that may still unseat PayPal as the major player in the space, but now that eBay has them I doubt it.

Low barrier of entry means this and the auction space are ripe, but getting traction in it is hard.

What concerns me the most is the service aspect of the deal. PayPal has a bad reputation, but there is hope it will it will improve.

---
Go Daddy President Interview

There are, however, irrevocable internet currencies out there (I sell one, actually)

Imagine a digital rights management infrastructure that requires you to pay per view using a metal as currency. Not just any metal, a precious metal.

That's e-Palladium.

e-gold also does user to user, and has worked well (without media fanfare*) since 1996. The fees are lower than Amazon's, too. Amazon payments can be called back for a while, but with e-gold when you get paid, you'll STAY paid. The only problem is getting people to think about grams instead of dollars and to understand that an exchange transaction is therefore required to obtain the stuff. Once that's done, it's easy to use.

If anyone here wants to try the system, create a free account and email me the number so I can click you a bit of it. Thanks.
JMR -- Speaking ONLY for me, as always.

* Compared to both 'beenz' & 'Flooz' -- RIP.

Help support payment systems without creditcards!
See www.e-gold.com

cya, Andrew...

Still fun to think about. Some comments:

First net war between cyber-communities 2007
Ever heard of IRC? This kind of thing has been happening for years.

Cassini reaches Saturn & releases Huygens lander into Titan's atmosphere 2004
Considering that this thing is already enroute to Saturn, this seems likely to transpire on time, unless the Klingons nab it.

Global barter sub-economy 2012
e-gold.com

Neighbourhood intranets 2005
Most people don't even talk to their neighbors, do they really want them behind their firewall?

Hydrogen fuelled executive jets (cryoplanes) 2005
The aviation industry is pretty slow to incorporate new technologies, look how long it took to get GPS authorized for instrument approaches. I'd be surprised if a hyrogen powered aircraft we to be for sale in 2005. Even if such a thing could be made and licensed, no body would buy it because there would be nowhere to fuel it. I would concede a prototye engine is flown by 2005.

Faster than light travel 2100
The best predictions are those that cannot be disproved until after the death of the predictor.

I've looked a little bit at e-gold.com. Looks pretty decent if you're not trying to deal with credit cards. Bonus, your money is always backed by precious metal (depends on if you're using e-gold, platinum or whatever) of which you are the legal owner.

I've also heard that Yahoo has something that more closely resembles PayPal in service and just might do international. I don't know much about it though.

So what is a paypal dollar backed by?

And by extension, what is a Federal Reserve Note (FRN) backed by? I don't have any on me right now, but I've looked before and it says... nothing. They used to say "payable in gold upon demand", or something similar, I believe, but not anymore. I also think they used to say, "backed by the full faith and credit of the United States" (or something similar), whatever that means. But now it doesn't even say that. So I'm stumped - as far as I'm concerned, FRNs are worthless, and it's only through the miracle of mass dellusion that you can get people to trade you physical items for pieces of green paper.

Support real money - accountable in actual physical ounces of gold, silver, platinum or palladium. Use e-gold.

You should check out E-Gold.

E-Gold Site

Absolutely no chargebacks and a very robust API for automation.

If you want to get US$ out of it you can visit any of the exchange providers for that. My site is one of them.

• e-gold The first and biggest
• GoldMoney More offshore
• E-BullionWe try harder because we're smaller

Paypal is bunk. It was a nice novelty to begin with but the amount of people with negative stories about them is astounding. The are evolving into something with a heart of pure evil. Or was that Microsoft.

Bugger it, anyway, gold baby gold. e-gold is the biggest electronic gold clearing house at the moment.

It's much more fun to pay in gold rather than dollars. And talking about ounces of product gets some great reactions :)

I personally have had nothing but good experiences with Paypal, but I was shocked to learn that there was a dark side to it that many, many people have been burned by. It seems the fact that I've had no problems with Paypal is the exception rather than the rule -- many people haven't been so fortunate.

Some of the problems can just be attributed to "shit happens," but in many cases, Paypal is guilty of out-and-out theft: when they receive a complaint about a single transaction, they often freeze the accounts of everyone involved, and then do everything possible to make themselves inaccessible by phone or e-mail so that the accounts can never be unfrozen. They've just walked away with someone's money. Good job.

Anyway, here are some useful links that have many, many testimonials of bad experiences:

Paypal Warning

Testimonials from above site.

PaypalSucks.com

Based on the testimonials I've read, here are a few ways I can think of to make the Paypal experience as safe as possible.

1. NEVER leave money sitting in your Paypal account. Withdraw it IMMEDIATELY. They will freeze it, or steal it, if they get an excuse to do so -- any excuse will do. Don't be tempted by their "Paypal Money Market Fund". That 1.2% APR isn't going to make you rich. You'd be better transfering your money to your bank where it can't be stolen. They can't steal what isn't there.

2. Try to avoid setting up a bank account on Paypal or giving them your checking account number for any reason. They do everything in their power to convince/force you to set up a bank account, which should give you cause for suspicion. If you give them your checking account number, they can (and will) withdraw the money from your bank account at any time without permissions.

3. If you must set up a bank account with Paypal, contact your bank and tell them NOT to allow Electronic Funds Transfers from Paypal without your approval. Unlike with a credit card, there's no way to dispute EFT charges. Get this in writing from your bank.

4. Check your credit card statement carefully each month, and chargeback any mysterious charges immediately -- but not if you have money sitting in your Paypal account or they have your bank account number, because they will take your money away from you if you do a chargeback. Get your money safe first, then call the credit card company to do a chargeback.

5. Try to avoid using a debit card -- you have no fraud protection, and if the debit card draws from the same account as the bank account you have set up in Paypal, you might run into some problems because of the way Paypal does things. If you have $600 in your bank account, and you try to make a $500 Paypal payment from your bank account, it'll bounce! Why? Since bank transfers take 3 days, Paypal wants to avoid finding out 3 days later that there's no money in the account, so they use your credit/debit card to "secure" the transaction by "locking" $500 on the card and then releasing it after the bank transfer clears. So now, when you've tried to pay $500 from your bank account, Paypal has locked $500 of the $600 in the account, leaving only $100 in the account which will make the $500 bank transfer bounce. The bank will charge you a bounced transfer fee, Paypal will charge you a fee, and you'll be unhappy with the whole situation. Sometimes even when the transaction DOES complete, they still don't release the "hold" on the card for days, weeks, months, or ever.

6. Do not use Paypal for large transactions. Use some sort of escrow service. With the incredible fees Paypal is charging now, it wouldn't be much more expensive.

7. As an alternative to Paypal, consider using E-Gold instead. Instead of dealing in a national currency like Dollars or Pounds, it uses actual physical gold as currency: you actually own a stake in the vault of gold that the company owns, and you can send/receive electronic gold from others as payment. It's very expensive to get involved, though: getting money into an E-Gold account requires you to go through a currency exchange service (E-Gold does not offer this service directly) which generally charge a 15% conversion fee, and 1% of your balance is deducted per year.

The cool thing about E-Gold, though, is that if you buy 5 ounces of gold, you'll always have that 5 ounces of gold in your account no matter what happens to the value of gold or to your national currency. If you spend (for example) $200 on 2 ounces of gold, but six months later the price of gold has risen from $100/ounce to $300/ounce, you'll still have that 2 ounces of gold -- but it'll now be worth $600. Pretty nice, eh? A lot nicer than Paypal's 1.2% APR mutal fund.

Anyway, use Paypal if you have to, but be safe. Minimize the opportunities for them to steal your money. Don't use them as a bank. They're not a bank; they're not regulated as a bank, but they want you to use them as a bank so that they'll have more chances to take your money.

Play it safe, and you should be okay.

Trading currency derivatives is one place, at least, where WAP has succeeded. Check E-gold[e-gold.com] for their WAP client[pcs.e-gold.com]. This allows you to do E-gold spends and also check your account from a PCS or WAP enabled phone.

I was impressed when I saw that, as I had previously thought WAP was simply vapour.

Trading currency derivatives is one place, at least, where WAP has succeeded. Check E-gold[e-gold.com] for their WAP client[pcs.e-gold.com]. This allows you to do E-gold spends and also check your account from a PCS or WAP enabled phone.

I was impressed when I saw that, as I had previously thought WAP was simply vapour.

I just wish we could also say...add to that tips.

I'm sure not everyone would tip for everything they enjoyed, but whether it's Courtney Love saying it or Scott McCloud saying it even better (twice! one and two) it's clear that some of us would like to directly compensate artists we like.

I think that musicians are poorly represented in this debate by the RIAA, and if we as individual consumers reach out to the artists we like, then maybe we'll get more of what we want with fewer (or less-greedy*) middlemen.
JMR

*Obligatory plug -- try it and send me an account number so I can click you a bit.

There are already plenty like what we read in the Cryptonomicon. The only problem is, someone has to be brave enough to jump in. You'll be sure and let me know if these are worth pursuing. They sound too much like the spam I've been getting lately.

e-gold.com , goldeconomy.com, goldmoney.com

And you want to bypass the RIAA's preferred subscription services & support the artists directly (good music isn't free) and voluntarily, then you want a system where you can tip artists; either directly with our currency (blatant plug!) or others, or just something like Fairtunes.

The problem I see is that plenty of people (I'm not singling you out, this is a general rant) spend a lot of time *saying* that they don't want to steal from artists, but folks don't seem to go out of their way -- even a little-bit -- to try to pay for the music that they get now for free, since they "haven't had to before." This is unfortunate (and it's a lousy excuse, IMO) but now there's no 'tipping culture' in online music. Obviously, I think that needs to change (preferably with a wide variety of payment choices). Perhaps someone more-eloquent than I can cause the change, I don't know.
JMR
(speaking only for myself, as always)

Instead, you use a micropayment system where, when they site wants to charge you for content, you get a popup from your micropayment bank asking

'Site XYZ wants to charge you $0.01 for item ABC. Accept/Deny/File Complaint'

You then authorize that single specific charge through your micropayment bank- not any larger amount. It's all pretty standard in the design documents for the more thorough micropay systems.

One such example is e-gold, where all transactions go through their servers, and must be authorized by the payer.

The e-gold/e-silver system is interesting for micropayment because transactions between users are free to the payer and 1% surcharge to the payee (max 50 cents). They make most of their money on moving funds between national currencies and gold.

They do seem to be missing one crucial feature- anonymous transactions, where you do not reveal your account information to the vendor at all.

Gold as electronic payment has been around for years. Duh! Heard of e-gold Slashdot?

You think my comment is reundant? This whole thread is redundant! OK so Slashdot is talking about Duke Nukems phrase competitions and things that have been around for years. I could forgive this if it wasn't for that right now Operation Clambake is in serious trouble because the ISP has given in to Scientology pressure and is removing his site for good. Hello?!? Then it becomes a bit silly to come here and talk about Protein Music.

I'm glad you're satisfied. One of the things I try to use to get merchants to accept e-gold is the fact that all they pay is the spend fee (fifty cents worth of gold, max, and much less for something like a tip to a musician) to get e-gold at "spot." At http://www.freedomhound.com you can sell $100 worth of e-gold for $102 worth of PayPal, and sites like that reinforce the (good, IMO) idea that e-gold is simply "better money." It's run by a friend, Vince Callaway, who has been around the "gold community" for a while, and knows the value of different currencies. :)
JMR

The nice e-gold people make themselves sound trustworthy. They have a nice story about how they hold the gold in trust for you. It seems credible enough.

I used to be keen on the idea of e-gold. I used to have an e-gold account. I used to advertise it as a way to pay me for EBay transactions. The only problem was that nobody was interested in paying me through e-gold--the US dollar seems to be the de facto world monetary standard. My market wasn't interested in paying through e-gold, so I lost interest in e-gold.

So if I go to Paris and buy franks with dollars for a week's vacation, but get called home after a day, they'll give me back six days' worth of currency on my card? I doubt it...

Currency exchange businesses (I work for one, I know) charge a spread & try to make a profit. We aren't charities at all. There's a bid and an ask price on grams of gold (and a lot of competition among those who sell it) for example.
JMR

Here's more about Parker Bradley. Despite three months + having passed since the raid, Parker has yet to be charged with jack squat. *sigh* Parker Bradley is a friend of mine, and life isn't too nice for him these days...(get some e-gold and donate it to him). e-gold isn't anonymous cash like in Cryptonomicon or the Grabbe piece, it's just another flavor of money, but one that can be particularly useful, IMO (see below). e-gold provides a level of privacy exceeding credit cards (they don't sell, trade, give away, etc. customer info) but not exceeding bearer stuff, so it's not a good idea for the Jim Bell types.

e-gold (which has so far lasted since 1996) andOmniPay (I work for them, not e-gold, and I speak only for myself) are doing fine, actually. I'd like lots of Slashdot folks to try the stuff, because you tend to be programmers, and nice things happen when programmers play with e-gold. I'd like for Slashdot-like sites to sell mod points (a quickly expiring currency) so I've offered a ten-gram reward for it (about 80-90 bucks' worth, at the moment, so not much). I'd like for folks to think of e-gold for the cool stuff that can be done with it. Using the shopping cart as a tipjar and direct, voluntary donations to musicians might solve the Napster problem someday, IMO. e-gold is a bit tough to understand at first (grams as a currency?!?) although selling gold (a very emotional substance with humans, still, whether it's electronic or physical) can be a business where it's very hard to love *every* single customer...Mostly it's fascinating and lots of fun. The currency is growing pretty fast without much marketing budget, in part because of the "fan club" of sites like BananaGold and cool directories maintained by others. It's very nice for me.

Anyway, if folks on Slashdot want to try it, I have a promotional account, so just send me your account number and I can click you some (not much, I don't toss this stuff around like Paypal, but OTOH we're in the black...) gratis. Thanks.
JMR

Here's more about Parker Bradley. Despite three months + having passed since the raid, Parker has yet to be charged with jack squat. *sigh* Parker Bradley is a friend of mine, and life isn't too nice for him these days...(get some e-gold and donate it to him). e-gold isn't anonymous cash like in Cryptonomicon or the Grabbe piece, it's just another flavor of money, but one that can be particularly useful, IMO (see below). e-gold provides a level of privacy exceeding credit cards (they don't sell, trade, give away, etc. customer info) but not exceeding bearer stuff, so it's not a good idea for the Jim Bell types.

e-gold (which has so far lasted since 1996) andOmniPay (I work for them, not e-gold, and I speak only for myself) are doing fine, actually. I'd like lots of Slashdot folks to try the stuff, because you tend to be programmers, and nice things happen when programmers play with e-gold. I'd like for Slashdot-like sites to sell mod points (a quickly expiring currency) so I've offered a ten-gram reward for it (about 80-90 bucks' worth, at the moment, so not much). I'd like for folks to think of e-gold for the cool stuff that can be done with it. Using the shopping cart as a tipjar and direct, voluntary donations to musicians might solve the Napster problem someday, IMO. e-gold is a bit tough to understand at first (grams as a currency?!?) although selling gold (a very emotional substance with humans, still, whether it's electronic or physical) can be a business where it's very hard to love *every* single customer...Mostly it's fascinating and lots of fun. The currency is growing pretty fast without much marketing budget, in part because of the "fan club" of sites like BananaGold and cool directories maintained by others. It's very nice for me.

Anyway, if folks on Slashdot want to try it, I have a promotional account, so just send me your account number and I can click you some (not much, I don't toss this stuff around like Paypal, but OTOH we're in the black...) gratis. Thanks.
JMR

No, that's not what happened to e-gold.com. That's what happened to Gold-Age.net, which, frankly, doesn't have the most confidence-inspiring website.

E-gold is still around.

You can even get an account in other precious metals, such as silver and palladium. They have stats on this. One of their customers even has between 100 kg and 1000 kg of e-gold!

Now, how to convert your life savings into e-zinc and where to put it? :-)

Jacco (to e-mail me, please remove all yourclothes)
---
# cd /var/log

You can even get an account in other precious metals, such as silver and palladium. They have stats on this. One of their customers even has between 100 kg and 1000 kg of e-gold!

Now, how to convert your life savings into e-zinc and where to put it? :-)

Jacco (to e-mail me, please remove all yourclothes)
---
# cd /var/log

Whatever happened to e-gold.com? I think I'd trust them nore than this new guy.

Er...this will probably get me modded down (Score:-1, greedy) and e-gold isn't just a currency for micropayments, since big payments work better too....but there's a company with what's been called an "offbeat scheme" by the clue-impaired and "just a currency" by me, which has been in the black for more than a year, and has been around since 1996. From the looks of things, we're doing ok, despite very little hype. We store plenty of metal for our customers (of all sorts, in many nations) these days.

Of course, the filthy yellow metal occupies the most emotional spot on the periodic table (see some past replies to my rants) and so far major artists haven't yet set up tipjars, but I'm not giving up. Fairtunes has the right idea, if artists insist on someone else doing it for them, but I think that by using the internet artists should connect more-directly to fans. Some of them already do (I'm thinking of Ted Nugent and Todd Rundgren, among others). Scott Adams gets plenty of great ideas for Dilbert by reading his email, and the same is probably possible for songs.

I think the key is to make payments preferably-voluntary and small, and I think there's certainly space for more than one payment system and more than one currency-flavor. Of course, what do I know? I also think Slashdot-like sites should try to sell mod-points.
JMR

Speaking ONLY for me!

Er...this will probably get me modded down (Score:-1, greedy) and e-gold isn't just a currency for micropayments, since big payments work better too....but there's a company with what's been called an "offbeat scheme" by the clue-impaired and "just a currency" by me, which has been in the black for more than a year, and has been around since 1996. From the looks of things, we're doing ok, despite very little hype. We store plenty of metal for our customers (of all sorts, in many nations) these days.

Of course, the filthy yellow metal occupies the most emotional spot on the periodic table (see some past replies to my rants) and so far major artists haven't yet set up tipjars, but I'm not giving up. Fairtunes has the right idea, if artists insist on someone else doing it for them, but I think that by using the internet artists should connect more-directly to fans. Some of them already do (I'm thinking of Ted Nugent and Todd Rundgren, among others). Scott Adams gets plenty of great ideas for Dilbert by reading his email, and the same is probably possible for songs.

I think the key is to make payments preferably-voluntary and small, and I think there's certainly space for more than one payment system and more than one currency-flavor. Of course, what do I know? I also think Slashdot-like sites should try to sell mod-points.
JMR

Speaking ONLY for me!