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Whoever controls currency, has the power. This fact alone assures that governments will never allow wholesale the wholesale success of any company that seeks to

by TrevorJ 17y ago

Whoever controls currency, has the power. This fact alone assures that governments will never allow wholesale the wholesale success of any company that seeks to usurp state-governed currency models as the de-facto means of transactional debt payment. If it wasn't illegal in the first place and he had become successful, it would have been outlawed at some point.

ajross 17y ago
To be fair: this wasn't a purely innocent web startup. Whether intended or not, it was a money laundering operation for real criminals. That's just not something that the economy or our governments should be expected to allow out of a sense of "justice" or "freedom". For known operations, like banks, we have regulations limiting their behavior to curb exactly this kind of problem. Regulation couldn't act here because of the newness and complexity, so law enforcement had to. And law enforcement is ugly, and sometimes confused. And sometimes innocent* people get caught up, and we need to sort things out. When that happens, we have things like grand jury indictments and jury trials that are intended to help out. And that process worked. He ultimately pled guilty and received what seems to me like a comparatively minor sentence (no jail time, 6 months house arrest, 36 month supervision). Could thing have been handled better? No doubt. But, really: does anyone think that allowing E-Gold to continue to operate as-is was a better option? * Innocent-ish, I guess. I have a hard time believing that this guy was a naive as the story paints him. I mean, how can you not suspect criminal activity in an operation like this?
ivankirigin 17y ago
If people can start their own countries and governments, then they might be able to make independent currencies that actually work well given today's technology. There is a big reason to do this: the credit card industry essentially doesn't need to exist. That's many $B's to disintermediate.

by TrevorJ 17y ago

ajross 17y ago

To be fair: this wasn't a purely innocent web startup. Whether intended or not, it was a money laundering operation for real criminals. That's just not something that the economy or our governments should be expected to allow out of a sense of "justice" or "freedom". For known operations, like banks, we have regulations limiting their behavior to curb exactly this kind of problem. Regulation couldn't act here because of the newness and complexity, so law enforcement had to. And law enforcement is ugly, and sometimes confused. And sometimes innocent* people get caught up, and we need to sort things out. When that happens, we have things like grand jury indictments and jury trials that are intended to help out. And that process worked. He ultimately pled guilty and received what seems to me like a comparatively minor sentence (no jail time, 6 months house arrest, 36 month supervision). Could thing have been handled better? No doubt. But, really: does anyone think that allowing E-Gold to continue to operate as-is was a better option? * Innocent-ish, I guess. I have a hard time believing that this guy was a naive as the story paints him. I mean, how can you not suspect criminal activity in an operation like this?

ivankirigin 17y ago

If people can start their own countries and governments, then they might be able to make independent currencies that actually work well given today's technology. There is a big reason to do this: the credit card industry essentially doesn't need to exist. That's many $B's to disintermediate.