I fear, the only way to change this would be if someone offered DGC > DGC automatic exchange interface which merchants could implement into their payment gateways.
Indeed - this is what I have proposed for a long time.
Say you had an IG where you could make payments, of course, to your fellow users within that IG...
*AND* say you wanted to pay someone egold, 12 grams. There would ALSO be the ability to have the system make that payment - ie in e-gold - for a small fee.
*AND* say you wanted to pay someone pecunix or goldmoney .. the system would be able to do that for you, for a small fee too.
So you could say ..... it's Sidd's pecunix system combined with Sidd's dgc<->dgc system amalgamated directly in to Sidd's pecunix system.
I have been ranting about this for a long time. In fact, 1mdcGrams was going to be the first system to do this.
So, you log in to 1mdcGrams.
So, there is as spend form ... pay grams to user blah.
But right beside that it says, and if someone wants you to pay them goldmoney, enter that persons GM account, and amount of grams, and payt that person in GM ("1mdc will charge a small fee for this service")
And similarly for ebullion, Pecunix, egold, yadda yadda.
Astonishingly, over at 1mdc we have DONE all the work for this, but it has now been something like 2 years without launching version 2 of 1mdc! :)
Hence, I encourage Sidd to urgently integraate metal-escrow's dgc<->dgc system DIRECTLY IN TO pecunix.
Face facts, 99.99% of the world's IG transactions are in e-gold, so if you made it possible to pay someone in e-gold (Sidd) you would immediately have a huge advantage.
Thought, you could even charge a LARGE percentage (5% or 7% something) - why not? People are not obligated to use it, but it would be very convenient.
(Justy this morning or instance I had to pay two invoices, one to a party who accepts Pecunix - I just made a pecunix payment - and the other to a party who likes Pecunix but just will never use it because of the PIK system, so they only accept egold, so I had to go over to metal-escrow and do a cool automated cross-spend. But just imagine Sidd if right there in Pecunix it said --- in fact you know my "recent payees" menu? if there was ANOTHER menu, 'direct pay recent payess' and it said "Steve Smith, GoldMoney, 13-13-67-X ... Tim Tomato, e-gold, 781234 ..." and so on ... how good would that be?)
{Again I'm not just whining we've DONE all or most of this over at 1mdc, but too slack to install it, hell!}
(The reason I address you specifically Sidd is you're the most can-do IG operator.)
{If *e-gold* did this, it would make them undisputably top dog and kill off the competitor IGs in a few weeks -- but it's a waste of typing telling egold to do anything.}
One would have to ramp up the amount of e-gold kept on hand to make these "direct other-IG spends" (I'm guessing 5 kilos would do it, rather than the typical 500 grams you have on hand in m-esc Sidd)
This would literally revolutionize the IG field. Because it would bring Pecunix up to e-gold size within a few months and then there'd be two large-number-of-spends IG systems
Incredibly (ie, I am astonishing) I identified this problem years ago, eg the interview extract below is from Monday, December 03, 2001 (coming up for two years - what an exciting two years it has been for IGs!)
Again (becuase I am so incredible!) I know the reason IGs are failing to grow currently - the reason is there can be no real competition between multiple IG systems until there is a clearing mechanism between them. The sentences from Dowd (below) exactly explain this in perfect prose.
What I am suggesting to Sidd (again Sidd there's no point just suggesting this "generally to IG operators," I might as well speak directly to you since you're the can-do guy) above is not really a central clearing operation, but it is a significant step towards it in practice. It would be exactly analogous to (in the free banking era) one bank X saying, well, ok, what the hell, we will always accept or even give to you the Notes of rival bank Y (for a small fee of course, but we'll do it). In fact in a sort of "open source" way this would be better for bank *X* even though superficially you might think they are doing Y a favor. Also notice the position X would be in to keep a careful professional eye on what's happening at Y, and the pressure Y would be under to stay honest know that ther others could downgrade them at any time -- the discovery process of the market blah blah
Anyway that's getting a bit ahead -- for now, it would be incredible if 1mGrams or Pecunix or indeed egold, goldmoney or ebullion, included "virtual clearing" for a fee directly inside their systems. Sure, sometimes the operator would be out of stocks of the "other" IG, and the fees may be high. But so what? It would be a fantastic start.
The convenience of being able to log in to your Pecunix account and say "Pay ISL, e-gold, 400400, 7500 grams, invoice #17878" would be astonishing.
Here is a long extract from my interview http://planetgold.com/interview.asp?SPID=75898458 of Messrs. Turk, including a very long extract from Kevin Dowd's book _Laissez Faire Banking_ (this book is from the IG (Ian Grigg) banking ouvre BTW):
Planetgold: Geoff and James, please have a read of the following long quote, which is from Kevin Dowd's book, Laissez-Faire Banking :
"_The development of note clearing._
"The next stage in the evolution of the banking system would be the development of a note clearing system that would arise out of bankers' attempts to raise their profits by increasing the demand for their notes.
"In the beginning, no banker would accept the notes of other banks when such notes we re submitted by the public, because to do so would make rivals' notes more acceptable and raise his competitors' profits.
"But any two banks could make themselves jointly better-off by agreeing to accept each other's notes. Each bank would benefit, because the public would more readily accept the notes of either of the two banks, given the knowledge that the other bank would accept the notes at par as well.
"The notes of those two banks would thus become slightly more attractive than alternative media of exchange such as gold or the notes of other banks.
"Thus additional bank pairs would be formed, and it would become increasingly apparent that the easiest way to organize the note exchange system would be to meet regularly at a central clearing session where the banks would hand back each others' notes and settle the differences. In this way a central clearing system would evolve out of the banks' own private self-interest.
"The clearing system is important because it would provide further restraint on the ability of any one bank to over issue its notes. Without the clearing system a bank that over issued would face a reserve drain only from the general public returning it's notes for specie, and it might take some time for this to force the bank to restrain its issues.
"Once the clearing system was in place however, a bank issuing more notes than the public wanted would also face reserve losses at the central clearing sessions.
"These losses would occur as the public deposited extra notes at other banks and those banks returned them to the issuing bank. A bank that over issued notes would thus lose reserves through two channels--through direct redemption by the public, and through indirect redemption via the clearing system--but the latter channel would be likely to operate more quickly."
Planetgold: Geoff, has GoldMoney ever considered a bold move such as -- accepting e-gold grams at par -- back and forth liquidly? This would cost you about $100,000 in liquidity (you'd have to build up 400 oz worth of e-gold before "stealing" a bar from e-gold and moving it to GoldMoney), but then, if you think GoldMoney is that much better than e-gold (which you probably do), it should work...right?
GT: Interesting question, JP. Given the recent news that e-gold's 'almost' 400 oz. bars evidently have an average weight of 395 oz., I wouldn't accept grams of e-gold at par with GoldGrams. But your question gets to the heart of an important point: how can DGC users easily move their gold between the different systems. GoldMoney has made this very easy by building an open system that allows any of its users to store or remove gold. There's even a Store/Delivery Gold request function built into GoldMoney's user interface. This simple storage/delivery function gets to the heart of reason that a central clearing system developed historically. There needed to be an efficient system in place to make sure that the specie (assets) of a bank was sufficient to back the notes they created (liabilities). As Dowd describes above, the central clearing mechanism between the banks had a tighter feedback loop than direct public redemptions, but I would argue this historical precedent does not carry over into the present because technology and the Internet in particular has equalized the feedback loop for everyone. However, this does not preclude GBCs from establishing a Holding with GoldMoney and providing a clearing function of its own.
JT: Even if we wanted to provide such a service, we would be reluctant to do it given that we have no way of knowing whether or not the other gold currencies do in fact maintain a one-to-one relationship between physical gold in the vault and virtual gold circulating as currency on the Internet. In other words, we would be reluctant to take the risk of holding a gold currency other than GoldGrams. However, I will note that www.goldcurrencies.ca and www.cambist.net makes a market in the interchange between GoldGrams and AUG, charging a fee for this service.
Planetgold: In my opinion central 'clearing' of gold currencies is the 'next big thing' which will put competitive pressures between the DGC/GBCs. Has GoldMoney th ought much or at all about this so far? Do you have any secret plans that Planetgold can flush out, for a bold interview? Will you go on the record saying you _don't_ have any such plans? Would GoldMoney embrace or reject an inter-gold currency 'clearing' mechanism?
GT: There is a great advantage in standardizing a payment protocol so that a seamless inter-gold clearing system can easily be developed between the various DGCs/GBCs and their users. GoldMoney is committed to working with others in the gold economy to develop and implement an XML standard for making and receiving payments, as well as other functions like requesting an account balance or statement. It makes sense to develop a simple, workable protocol now in these early days that we can then enhance over time. I think this inter-gold clearing mechanism you are describing a la Dowd is more of a function for the market to fulfil (or a subset of the market such as a large group of Cambios) rather than for it to be provided by any of the gold currency issuers, just like the Forex market currently sets the rate of exchange between the various national currencies issued by their governments, although central banks do occasionally have some leverage in those markets. If the market thinks that GoldGrams are a better currency than another DGC or a GBC, then it will take less than a GoldGram to purchase a gram of another gold currency. Thus the market would act as the check/restraint that Dowd describes above that prevents other currency issuers from issuing more virtual gold currency than physical gold currency. As long as the GBCs regularly disclose to the public through an independent third-party how much physical gold t hey hold and how much is in circulation electronically, the market can easily make this decision. GBCs that fail to disclose this information will trade at a discount to real DGCs like GoldMoney.
(end of article extract)
--- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses.
