Jun

30

Bullion and Bandits: The Improbable Rise and Fall of E-Gold

Filed Under E-gold 

 

I had some dealings with e-gold a few years back. They foolishly decided not to list one of my old sites on their site. It was a strange decision too as my old site was one of the only places regular people could actually earn e-gold (by writing articles). So, yes, perhaps I am still bitter.

I still like the idea of digital gold though. Like the Liberty Dollar people, they should be free to run their own businesses as they want to.

Here’s the article. Please leave comments below!

Bullion and Bandits: The Improbable Rise and Fall of E-Gold

"MELBOURNE, Florida — In a sparsely decorated office suite two floors above a neighborhood of strip malls and car dealerships, former oncologist Douglas Jackson is struggling to resuscitate a dying dream.

Jackson, 51, is the maverick founder of E-Gold, the first-of-its-kind digital currency that was once used by millions of people in more than a hundred countries. Today the currency is barely alive.

Stacks of cardboard evidence boxes in the office, marked “U.S. Secret Service,” help explain why, as does the pager-sized black box strapped to Jackson’s ankle: a tracking device that tells his probation officer whenever he leaves or enters his home.

“It’s supposed to be jail,” he says. “Only it’s self-administered.”

Jackson, whose six-month house arrest ends this month, recently met with Wired.com for his first in-depth interview since pleading guilty last year to money laundering-related crimes, and to operating an unlicensed money transmitting service. His tale is one of countless upstarts and entrepreneurs who approached the internet with big dreams, only to be chastened by sobering realities. But his rise and fall also offers a unique glimpse at the web’s frontier halcyon days, and the wilderness landscape that still covers much of the unregulated and un-policed web, where fraud artists prospect for riches alongside pioneers, and sometimes stake, and win, a claim on their territory…."

Continued:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/e-gold/

 

So, what do you think?

 

 

 

Comments

One Response to “Bullion and Bandits: The Improbable Rise and Fall of E-Gold”

  1. bruce judelson on July 1st, 2009 12:40 am

    the government as usual shows itself out of control. yes there are scammers and criminals out there. the point is the federal reserve is (at least one of ) the biggest scams out there. was a free market solution allowed to develop its own controls over stolen property- no. the focus is government control, compliance, the right forms— they have to know everything (as only their club members get a free pass) about the rest of us. i think it was tragic and a miscarriage of justice for any of what happened to the firm as well as the firm acting like (our government or federal reserve or wto etc) regulated firms do re knowing their customers. it is shameful that in an allegedly free society , your money- something rightfully very personal– is controlled by government. it is just one more (although a big one) reason people need to awake to the horrors of leviathan.

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