e-gold has always been an interesting company – an alternative value-transfer system that’s not attached to government currency because it’s backed by gold. The payments business charges much more than my gut tells me the service should cost; any competitor in this market should be welcome. And I’m no expert in monetary policy, but I know that fiat money (“this has value because the government says it does”) is dangerous because it relies on the credibility of the government that issued it, and because governments regularly inflate their fiat currency by printing or minting more of it. This diminishes the value of the currency in our hands.
But money is a sensitive area – governments are pretty protective of their prerogatives – and e-gold hasn’t always done such a good job making the case for itself. Suspicions about the use of this service may have culminated recently in an indictment against e-gold officials alleging conspiracy to launder money and various regulatory infractions, which met with a strenuous response from them.
Now e-gold is going to tell it’s story, putting a human face on what they’re trying to do. No, it’s not this video. They’ve started a blog. It should be interesting and educational. I’m listening to an interview with e-gold’s Chairman, Douglas Jackson, right now.
The idea of an asset-backed, non-governmental value-transfer system is very attractive to me, and an indictment is not a conviction. I think it’ll be worthwhile to get e-gold’s side of the story, and they definitely need to tell it in Washington, D.C.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.