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Commerce gold (c-gold), a new digital gold currency has debuted, but despite the features and potential, I have some resentment about the shameless copying of e-gold’s web site look-and-feel. They could also have been more creative with the name. c-gold is just too similar to e-gold.

Aside the increased usage amongst other digital gold currencies, new ones are coming-up. This is as a result of the recent legal troubles e-gold/Omnipay has been having the the United States Department of Justice.

That said, I’d point out that c-gold promises to do many of the things e-gold does, an more. The one I find most significant is that they offer some verification for each account. Unlike e-gold’s anonymity with has attracted shady characters to their system.

According to DigitalMoneyWorld:

Verified accounts require ID, utility bills and other personal information. Why? The c-gold operators understand that the ‘The Know Your Customer’ (KYC) rules/regulations/laws spanning multiple jurisdictions around the globe are very important in today’s digital economy in order to combat terrorist funding, money laundering, child pornography, copyright infringements and to help eliminate attempts to abuse the c-gold system.

What can make the Malaysian digital gold currency promising? It operates online and offline, easy gold deposit and redemption, multilingual website (soon), customer support.
What can I say? The more the merrier, but only the strong will survive.

As at the time of blogging, c-gold’s website revealed the following stats:

8-Jul-2007 8:47:42 AM GMT

c-gold System Activity in the Past 24 hours
New Accounts: 23
Users Accessing Acounts: 31
Number of Spends: 2
Spent Weight (G): 131.104

Balance Summary
Number of Funded Accounts: 7
Avg Funded Account Balance (G): 742.8571
c-gold in circulation (G): 5200

Other digital gold currencies have been gaining popularity and patronage over the past weeks, following e-gold’s legal woes with the United States Justice department.

e-bullion and webmoney especially, have been seeing more patronage with online investment schemes and digital gold currency exchangers alike. The most recent move was made by CashCards Int. In a recent email to all their users, their CEO, Steve Renner, wrote about the addition of e-bullion exchange:

= = = = = = = = = = E-Bullion Exchange = = = = = = = = = =
We have been getting 4-5 emails a day from our  Members asking about E-Bullion. People want to Exchange their E-Gold for E-Bullion.   After serious consideration we have decided to go ahead and accept E-Bullion orders.   You can now Exchange your E-Gold for E-Bullion.   The system is not fully automated yet, but it  will be by next week.   So in the mean time, if you want to Exchange  for E-Bullion now, just transfer your E-Gold  as usual, and then send us an email with  your E-Bullion account number and we will  make the transfer for you.

Capitalex.com according to information retrieved from the 17th March 2007 version of their website through the Internet Archive WaybackMachine:

Capitalex.com Inc. is a global gold merchant corporation, established in the Republic of Panama as a subsidiary of the International Currency Conglomerate (ICC).

In business since March 2004, Capitalex.com is dedicated to making a decisive difference in the lives of its clients by providing them with Superior customer service, Rapid order execution, Competitive prices and special offers.

As 0730 GMT today 2nd July 2007, a check on www.capitalex.com simply displayed thier logo and the follow text:

support@capitalex.com
Capitalex.com recommends:
Reliable exchanger: Instant Gold Exchange
Innovative new e-currency: Loom.cc

No mention is made as to their reason for shutting down, on their blog.

Capitalex.com gained much popularity of the years, as a result of their professional e-currency exchange services. They also endeared themselves to their customers through their “Real Money Review” newsletter/publication. They had also been blogging extensively about e-currencies, scams, e-currency usage surveys, their own services and until recently, were also offering Virtual Credit Cards for sale though theirs were rather pricey.

Capitalex.com was also behind the extensive campaign against INTGold, until the “ecurrency” folded-up. See intgoldsucks.com

They even at one time, made offers to clients to invest their gold with them, so they could share the profit at a later time. Capitalex.com seemed formidable and invincible.

Capitalex.com was not listed as one of the e-currency exchangers who lost some gold, when e-gold Ltd’s troubles began. So, one cannot say they lost their gold deposit. More so, Capitalex.com is not based in the USA. Their websites are currently hosted in Malaysia.

Located in Panama City, the Crossroads of the Americas, Capitalex.com offers timely and efficient gold merchant services to customers around the world, 365 days a year.

Words have been going round on various blogs and forums, that Capitalex.com is a scam. The e-currency exchanger has however been refuting some of the allegations, on their blog, as recently as 2nd June 2007.

That their main website can close down today without any announcement to customers or information on their blog, can only make one suspicious and speculative.

Are you a Capitalex.com staff? Are you a customer? Do you have any information about the unavailability of Capitalex.com? Share your thoughts by posting a comment.

Alertpay is fast becoming the e-currency of choice amongst many users around the world. Its accepts e-gold, allows withdrawal to e-gold, it verifies the identity of its users, offers lower fees than Paypal, it has a great and responsive customer support, it is based in Canada, I cant list all the positive attributes here and now.

Alertpay had before now only allowed users in the USA and Canada to withdraw to US and Canadian banks respectively but this is about to change. According to a recent release by the company:

[...]Opening up the world

As of Monday June 18th 2007, all AlertPay members in 234 countries around the world can now add or withdraw funds using their Canadian or US based bank accounts. [...]

This adds to the list of positives for Alertpay. The company has already announced that there’s more to come, in commemoration of its 2 years anniversary so stay tuned.

e-gold’s woes are not getting any better. The US government is constantly harassing them and so OmniPay, the exchange service of G&SR, is moving to Africa. Read below, a press release by Omnipay:

OmniPay temporarily suspends exchange to transition to OmniPay Africa

Effective immediately, G&SR will be leasing the OmniPay business to OmniPay Africa. All OmniPay exchanges will now involve e-gold transfers and money payments into/out of OmniPay Africa’s e-gold and bank accounts respectively. G&SR has contracted to serve as the Operator of OmniPay but will not be a party to actual exchanges.

In terms of immediate impacts:

• The OmniPay exchange service will suspend operation pending provisioning of a suitable bank account for OmniPay Africa. It is anticipated this service interruption will start May 24, 2007 with service resuming on or about June 18, 2007.
• With resumption, all bank wires from customers must be directed to
  the new bank coordinates which will be posted on the omnipay.com website.

The original plan was for OmniPay Africa to organize as a licensee of G&SR, the US company that owns OmniPay. A substantial development effort was underway to support the additional requirements for over-the-counter exchange operations such as biometric validation. However, recent actions of the US government, originating from a long-standing and misguided animus on the part of the US Secret Service, necessitate immediate action. Specifically, SEB Bank in Estonia has notified G&SR it is closing its bank account at close of business May 25, 2007 explicitly because of the Press Release from the US DOJ.

We regret the temporary interruption of OmniPay services. Just as the US government’s recent actions in seizing e-gold accounts of e-gold Ltd., G&SR, The Bullion Exchange, AnyGoldNow, IceGold, GitGold, The Denver Gold Exchange, GoldPouch Express and 1MDC (and forcing G&SR to liquidate the seized assets!) have severely damaged not only these exchange businesses but also their innumerable customers, their forcing this complex transition to be performed on an emergency basis is simply shameful.

We do not however regret the transfer of OmniPay responsibilities to OmniPay Africa. As will become abundantly clear in coming months, the OmniPay Africa team is highly qualified to guide OmniPay to a higher level, a genuinely global service that will foster a beneficial surge in e-gold’s emergence while bringing significant advantages to emerging economies.

Strategic Background

A major strategic emphasis for e-gold is to provide sophisticated remote payments capabilities to the majority of mankind underserved by or excluded by the banking system. An important focus is international remittances - payments from migrant workers living in advanced economies sending a portion of their earnings to their home country. For many developing economies, migrant remittances constitute a significant portion of foreign exchange income and even GDP. Traditional remittance mechanisms, however, are expensive and inflexible. It is estimated that lowering the net cost of remittances by a few percentage points could measurably enhance economic development. There is also increasing awareness that non-traditional banking such as micro-credit facilities can also aid in bootstrapping lesser developed economies.

OmniPay Africa, an entirely non-US company, majority owned by prominent business leaders from the Francophone countries of West Africa, was therefore organized to extend the usefulness of e-gold by providing support for over-the-counter exchange and by fostering the integration of e-gold into micro-credit lending institutions. The combination of e-gold (settling the international transfer of value with no need for a financial intermediary) and OmniPay (offering standardized, reliable, low cost exchange to/from local currency) will serve as a flexible low cost alternative to the traditional systems.

OmniPay is a trademark of Gold & Silver Reserve, Inc.
e-gold, e-silver, e-platinum, Better Money, AUG, AGG, PTG, PDG are trademarks of e-gold Ltd.

DigitalMoneyWorld has published a video on YouTube about a Congressional Subcommittee Hearing with focused on deleting Commercial Child Pornography Sites From the Internet: The U.S. Financial Industry’s Efforts to Combat This Problem

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