The e-gold
E-gold was the first digital (electronic) currency, issued by e-gold
Ltd., a Nevis corporation. This currency is, at all times, 100% backed by gold
bullion held in allocated storage at repositories certified by the London
Bullion Market Association (LBMA). Metal is held free of any lien or encumbrance
whatsoever and explicitly may not be attached to any liabilities of e-gold Ltd.
or any other entity. No metal may be removed from storage or any other
disposition made without the signatures of both e-gold Ltd. and a third party
Escrow Agent of good reputation.
The e-gold system grew very slowly to some 3000 accounts from 1996 to 1999 as
e-gold progressively gained more market exposure. In mid-1999, the system
started on a path of exponential growth at a rate of 20% per month. As of
September, 2001 there are over 268978 e-gold accounts.
A quantity of e-gold constitutes title to a precise weight (fine) of this
physical gold. The primary function of the system is to render payments, in gold
(silver, platinum, or palladium), from one customer to another.
E-gold may be Spent to any other e-gold account anywhere in the world via
the e-gold shopping cart interface (SCI), the e-gold Account Manager, or web
enabled mobile phone.
The target market for e-gold is simply people who use money. How do you
presently use money? Chances are any of these activities would benefit from
increased soundness, security, efficiency, and lower cost of e-gold. Here are
some examples of how e-gold is presently used:
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• e-commerce
• Business-to-business payments
• Point of service sales
• Person-to-person payments
• Payroll
• Bill payments
• Charitable donations
• Monetary base of the AUG* economy |
* AUG is an abbreviation for the currency unit "grams of gold".
Spend transactions (pay e-metal from one account holder to another) do not
involve a currency conversion. The fee for this transaction is 1% of the
transaction amount, subject to a maximum of 50 cents (US$) equivalent value. The
fee is debited in e-metal from the payee.
A Redemption order specifies physical metal of a specific specie for delivery.
Each specie has a premium that is added to the fine content of the total e-metal
account drawdown. A shipping and handling charge applies to each redemption
order and is debited from the requested e-metal type.
A storage fee of 1% per annum is charged to each e-metal account. It is assessed
in monthly installments, in e-metal, calculated according to the average daily
balance during the preceding month.
The e-gold system is designed to be absolutely free of any financial risk.
There can be no debt or contingent liabilities associated with e-gold. For this
reason, e-gold Ltd. does not possess any national currency of any nation and has
no bank accounts. Thus, e-gold Ltd. is not able to offer currency exchange
services.
Instead, a growing number of independent exchange services around the world
support exchange between national currencies and e-gold, accepting various
remittance methods, including credit cards, bank wires, checks, and money
orders. You can see these independent exchange providers on E-gold Site (Link -
"e-gold Directory"). For convenience sake we made a general table of
some Exchange Agents.
It costs nothing to open an e-gold account. There is no credit check. There
is no minimum balance requirement. There is no concept of a "merchant
account" in that all e-gold accounts may Spend e-gold or receive e-gold
payments.
Go to this
link, click on "create account", fill in the blanks and click on
"open".
The ID # they give you and "passphrase" are the two things you will
need to have in order to ever access your account, view the history of changes,
history of payments, do in-exchanges with, or Spend money from so choose those
two items carefully and record them somewhere before you click on
"open" account.
As soon as you click on "open" account, you will receive by email
your account number. Print it out and keep it in a safe place along with your
"passphrase".
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