If you have money tied up in e-bullion you could be in for a rough ride in getting your funds back when cashing in. All these gold-scams like DXinone  and the like eventually close their site, rename themselves, and set up shop again under a new name after a few months, gaining a whole new customer base.

Mark wrote many posts on this, that can be referred to here.  A recent warning in 2007  was posted on a forum. It seems this was justified.

E-BULLION WARNING (JULY 2007)
Due to numerous unanswered complaints, the Global Digital Currencies Association would like consumers and merchants to be aware that E-bullion.com closes and/or freezes accounts without any court order or reasonable justification, sometimes freezing customer funds forever.

This unscrupulous policy makes E-bullion an unfavorable system for online commerce and for the safe and secure storage and transfer of funds.

We recommend that E-bullion account holders switch to a different digital currency immediately in order to avoid frozen accounts and loss of funds, such as:

GoldMoney - www.goldmoney.com

Pecunix - www.pecunix.com

Liberty Reserve - www.libertyreserve.com

c-gold - www.c-gold.com

PhoenixDollar - www.phoenixdollar.com 

 E-bullion.com is also listed with an F rating by the Council of Better Business Bureau, Inc., and  have unanswered complaints  going back as far as 2005.

http://www.gdcaonline.org/content/news.html

moneypenny

When building a larger and stronger online digital gold economy, which comes first the merchants or the users?

The merchants come first. But, the users are easy to bring. The reason e-gold became the leading digital gold currency is very simple: they had a referral program. Their referral program split the revenues from the payment receive fee between the person referring the spender and the person referring the recipient. It worked. And the leading merchants were the ones who did the most to promote e-gold.

As long as I have been online and touting the benefits of digital gold currency, not too many people have put away their plastic and replaced it with e-gold or Pecunix.

I wouldn’t expect all forms of plastic to go away. Fiat money is actually in circulation rather than gold and silver because of Gresham’s law. So, it is well to have systems that inter-operate between gold and fiat. One of the projects I’ve been asked to consult on is a digital gold card where the balance is held in gold but the payments are in local currencies. Even with all the CC fraud, high rip off interest rates people still use their plastic when shopping online. About 90% of all US online transactions are paid with plastic.

What’s it going to take to get people to change?

The same thing it always takes, Mark. It is going to take a collapse of the world’s reserve currency. Fiat money inflation in France lasted seven years or so. The fiat money in Weimar Germany lasted four years. The experience in Yugoslavia was something like five quadrillion percent inflation in one and a half years. The Republic of China had hyperinflation for sixteen years while they fought the Japanese and then Mao. The United States dollar untied from gold in 1971, or 36 years ago. There have been amazing things in those three dozen years, that have kept the currency alive.

Read more

GoldMoney founder James Turk, editor of the Freemarket Gold & Money Report now tells us that gold could be headed higher.

More Records Are Ready to Fall

Gold ended the week and closed the month of September at $742.80. For the second week in a row, gold closed at the highest level since January 21st, 1980, which is the day it closed at the all-time record of $825.50. The closing price for September is a new record month-end high, as we can see on the following chart.

Read the full commentary and see the latest chart on the GoldMoney web site here…

GoldMoney is a very popular digital gold currency and an excellent way to store financial value online. As of September 2007 GoldMoney had over US$214 million of gold & silver in circulation.  If you need a safe and easy way to buy gold online, this is it!

In today’s digital currency market, there are fewer and fewer agents swapping DGC combos like e-gold/e-bullion. That’s why I’m pleased to report that SwapGold.com is now up and running in Singapore.

They provide a fast and trustworthy e-gold/e-bullion conversion service for global customers. Important in this type of transaction, they manually check each order and usually complete them all in just a few hours. If a problem develops in the transaction, they are on top of it and get the issue quickly resolved. Customers can actually reach a person to confirm orders.

Of course their entire web site is protected with SSL encryption and their business is legally registered in Singapore as Duxton Ventures Pte. Ltd. This is the same organization that operates SnapGold.com which has been putting smiles on clients since early 2006. This is a group I enjoy working with so if you have the exchange need or a free moment you may want to drop by their web site and check out any specials they may currently be offering!

Convert e-gold to e-Bullion e-Currency or Convert e-Bullion e-Currency to e-gold

Rates (last updated: 21 Sep 07)

• You convert US$1 e-Bullion to US$1.00 e-gold
• You convert US$1 e-gold to US$0.94 e-Bullion e-Currency

Is This Proactive Move By e-gold Having The Desired Effect?

Yes! ‘Investment web site’ operators and promoters are moving OUT of e-gold and into other offshore digital currencies.

Look around and you will find dozens of posts like these from the HYIP promotional webs, known as monitors. These two posts are from the Talkgold forums:

• “…I can’t operate as a monitor - can’t receive payouts or make reinvestments because of that block. May be it is time for all to stop use Egold and find another stable processor!”
• “How do I run a monitor site if account is blocked. I can’t make payment and get payouts from anyone”

All of these also from the Talkgold forums - “…tg is one of the top hyip forums in this arena.”

• “…its time to use a good alternate! what do you think about c-gold?”*talkgold
• “…Maybe all HYIPs should start using Pecunix or any other stable service?” *talkgold
• “…what do you think about Alertpay!” *talkgold
• “…It’s time for HYIP-admins to adapt their scripts and replace e-gold to other more reliable currencies. I can live without e-gold, e-gold can’t live without us.” *talkgold
• “I think we must use another e-currency”*talkgold - This comment from HYIPs.ir touted as the “Greatest HYIP monitor in Middle east with 14 language”
• “Looks like another e-currency will have to emerge.” *Comment by the Talkgold administrator

After reading the Talkgold forums, I’m reminded of how cockroaches run for cover at night when the kitchen light comes on!

Read more

It now appears that Dr. Jackson and the team over at e-gold Ltd. are making some bold due diligence moves in order to stop their digital gold currency from being used by HYIPs, Ponzi scams and AutoSurf programs.

These preventative measure will certainly not create an easy road ahead for the e-gold administration and their previous ponzi customers and I can’t image the mountain of paperwork now being created, but e-gold’s new actions seem to be exiting the HYIPs and driving them away from e-gold.

Three cheers for e-gold!

The e-gold tool being used in this crack down is termed the ‘value limited account’. Also known as a ‘blocked account’, it is quickly becoming the Ponzi’s worst enemy.

What does it mean when your e-gold account gets a value limit? Here is what might show up in your email:

“Your account has been blocked under our Rights of Association clause in the account user agreement.”

e-gold Account User Agreement: 4.6. Right of Association - Issuer reserves the right to refuse service to particular individuals or entities, at its sole discretion, with or without cause.

Unless the problem is corrected, a value limited account is 100% useless for any future business. Blocked accounts cannot accept any incoming funds. Read more

Two weeks ago, I posted this item Google Drops All E-gold Ads! (Adwords).

However, at the time we had no written confirmation from Google and it was not posted on their web site. Today, we have written confirmation of ad cancellations. Google is stating that the word ‘e-gold’ is a trademark and banning it from their ads.

One popular exchange agent which had ads canceled posted this email.

Thank you for advertising with Google AdWords. After reviewing your account, we’ve found that one or more of your ads or keywords does not meet our guidelines. You can see your disapproved ad(s), the reason for disapproval, and editorial suggestions, from the Disapproved Ads page within your account.

Ad Status: Suspended - Pending Revision

Ad Issue(s): Trademark in Ad Content

SUGGESTIONS:

Ad Content: Please remove the following trademark from your ad: e-gold.

Its also an odd thing that all of these other digital currencies GoldMoney, Pecunix, e-bullion, Webmoney, Liberty Reserve are also trademarked names…but they were not banned.

Special thanks to Shane at www.NanaimoGold.com for the information.

Have you ever received an email which seemed like it was from e-gold Ltd., Bank of America or PayPal….but it was sent from a hacker phishing for your info?

It would have read like this, “….we are making changes to our security, or there has been unauthorized activity on your account….you need to sign on and validate your PW, click here“.  Does that seem familiar.

Or the other nice looking ‘official’ web site asking you to log in at www.e-golg.com or www.e-gold5.com ‘click here‘. I get them almost everyday for e-gold, PayPal, NatWest, Bank of America and many more.

Different from online banking, digital gold currency and some other digital currencies like Liberty Reserve and e-bullion’s e-currency are built around the strict rule of non-reversible transactions. Consequently, if your digital currency account gets raided by hackers and instantly cleaned out….you are out of luck in getting a refund!

Digital currency offers, no chargebacks and no chance of fraud. Immediate worldwide settlement and finality of payment provide Internet merchants the ability to accept payments without any end of the month chargeback worry or surprises. This translates to NO loss of revenue from fraudulent payments.

Digital currency delivers payment confidence to its users.

However, because of this non-refundable policy, digital currency accounts are a special target for online thieves.

There are hundreds of phishing emails and fake web sites on the Internet trying to gather your personal information and log on credentials with the intent of stealing your online funds.  In hopes of helping consumers avoid these traps there are many software products devoted to blocking the scams.  Items such as anti-phishing toolbars, popular browsers with built in phishing filters and even virus protection software all attempt to block the bad web sites.

e-gold’s Dr. Douglas Jackson discusses some of these important issues over on the new e-gold blog, with this post - Example of how fake sites target users of e-gold, E-Bullion, Pecunix, and Liberty Reserve

The e-gold web site has always shown excellent tips on how to avoid being a victim of these hackers and the Security Recommendations on their web shows important information which will help to protect you from ‘unsafe surfing’.

The safe keeping of my online financial accounts is very important to me and each day I put my trust in Dr. Jackson.  With his decade of e-gold online payment experience, I know the e-gold blog advice is going to be current and very helpful.

How Does It Work And When Does It Collapse?

As his most famous 1920 operation became larger, Charles Ponzi, started to get questioned about his ‘investment’ scam. The most serious questions were centered on two topics. One set of questions looked at him personally and one line of questioning looked at his investment company.

The personal line of questions dug into Mr. Ponzi’s background. People asked reasonable questions such as, “…how Charles Ponzi could have gone from being broke to becoming a millionaire in so short a time.” The year was 1920 and a dramatic increase in wealth during such a short period of a few months was a real miracle.

Inquisitive people checked into to Mr. Ponzi’s background. They wanted to find what schools he attended or the financial firms he had previously worked for…..but they only found that he had been in prison. There was no legacy of higher learning or earlier years of experience working in finance. They began to ask, how he could be such a financial genius with no formal education, no financial investment training and only months earlier he was broke?

The question that echoed was, “…how did he become so good so quick?”

The next line of questions attacked his business. As it turned out, Mr. Ponzi’s largest scam was promising outrageously large returns and claiming logistically impossible numbers. People asking the questions then reverse calculated his ‘investment’ numbers based on the amount of money he was taking in….and alarm bells started to go off.

Ponzi’s largest scam, centered around ‘postal reply coupons’ and he claimed his company business earned returns in excess of 400%. He then offered the public a 50% return in 45 days, or a doubling of their money in 90 days. Sound familiar? After calculating the total investor funds and the amount of interest payable to his ‘investors’ the reverse engineered numbers quickly proved that his business was a total scam.

For his 1920’s operation to have been legitimate, there would need to be more then 160 million postal reply coupons in open circulation. But at the time of his operation there were just 27,000 actually circulating. When the public saw this problem, there was an ‘investor’ run on his bank. He no longer took in more than he paid out and the scam collapsed.

Let’s take a closer look at the A3Union Ponzi scam. They offer three basic investor options, three different lengths and returns: [7 days 12%], [14 days 28%] and [92 days 200%] I’ll examine two, the ‘Classic 12%’ and the ‘Low Risk Classic 200%’ options.

Read more

This month marked Google Checkout’s one year anniversary. Originally called the ‘PayPal Killer’, Google Checkout has gained wide market acceptance over this past year.

Additionally, PayPal has done very well in the same period.

The public appetite for online purchases and Internet fund transfers has grown enough in the last twelve months that it now feeds both of these Internet giants and one or two more just like them (Amazon.com). E-commerce opportunities both vertical & horizontal today seem plentiful in today’s online retail world.

Many users who compare Google Checkout to PayPal will tell you that Google is easier to use. They report Checkout as having fewer steps and easier to understand options. Of course, Google Checkout is just an ewallet for purchases online. While it is super handy when shopping it does not have the important features that a PayPal account can deliver. The ability to send and receive money online using your email address is not yet available on Google Checkout.

Both are free and easy to set up. Both require a credit card verification in order to get your account working.

When checking out and paying for a new purchase, users report Google Checkout to be much easier than PayPal. Users also report that Google Checkout appears more seamless and consistent to shoppers offering a smooth checkout. One of the biggest and most obvious differences is that Google is not accepted at nearly as many places as PayPal.

Both services are considered Alternate Payment Systems which is different from directly using a credit card online. Both services offer online privacy and protection. Your personal information stays private and is not shared before during or after the online sale. However, Checkout will sometimes give merchants your billing address and the last four digits of your credit card, while PayPal says it won’t unless you use the one-time option. On the other hand, PayPal shares your e-mail address with merchants that request it, while Checkout lets you keep that private and Google will forward receipts and other important e-mails to you.

But Checkout isn’t yet accepted where it counts. Google claims tens of thousands of merchants accepting Checkout, compared with the millions already using PayPal.

PayPal is better known overseas. You can buy goods from about 190 markets with PayPal compared with some 140 for Checkout. With PayPal, you can receive money in about 50 countries, while Checkout accepts U.S. and U.K. merchants only. And while PayPal is offered in 17 currencies, Checkout deals only with dollars and pounds.

Most importantly, Checkout won’t let you receive money with regular accounts you’d need a special merchant account and provide a Social Security number or federal tax identification number. With both Checkout and PayPal, consumers are charged nothing to send money or make payments.

Merchants are charged based on transaction amounts. Checkout’s rates are much easier to understand: It’s 2 percent plus 20 cents per transaction; fees are waived through the end of the year and beyond that merchants can receive subsidies by spending money on Google search ads. With PayPal, fees depend on your account type, monthly sales amounts and whether the buyer is sending money from a bank account or credit card.

Google does offers some very helpful discussion forums.

• Google Checkout Merchant forum Checkout merchants share questions and information with one another.
• Google Checkout Developers Forum Google Checkout API