>Patrick wrote: >If GoldMoney goes out of business, they must either give you your gold or >give you your proportional share of a liquidation sale, payable in fiat >currency I suppose. >If E-gold goes out of business, they must ... uh ... either give you your >gold or give you your proportional share of a liquidation sale, payable in >fiat currency I suppose.
>I'm not trying to be cute here, but I do have a hard time discerning a >difference between owning a thing versus having a CLAIM on a thing. What >IS >a claim anyway? A claim of ownership! If you have a valid claim on a >thing, don't you own the thing? No, not necessarily, legal niceties usually require some sort of �delivery� (doesn�t need to be physical but one accepted in law) for ownership to pass. In the case of GoldMoney delivery is assumed to have taken place, and the gold is held in trust for you by Euro-Dutch. Think of it this way: If you buy a car from a dealer, he is under an obligation to deliver �the kind of car� you ordered. Until the dealer delivers a particular car to you, or more precisely has it registered in you name, you don�t own any car even though you may have paid him in full. You simply have the right to claim that the dealer delivers �a� car to you. If the dealer doesn�t do so, all you can do is claim your money back. Should the dealer go out of business before you have the car delivered to you, you will join all the other creditors in claiming back the money you already paid. If there isn�t enough money to pay you, and all the other creditors, out in full you�re only going to get a part, or nothing back. With the GoldMoney system you�re in the position of the guy whose car has already been registered in his name, even though you haven�t driven it off yet. By analogy, as regards e-gold and other GBCs you�re the guy who hasn�t had the car delivered or registered in his name. Should the GBC go out of business you would just be one of the creditors, i.e. together with the hosting service, telephone company etc. >Sidd wrote: >As a GoldMoney user, I do not have that authority... so I must rely on >the promise of the person(s) who have the authority that they will >indeed give me my share if I demand it. Is this correct? >So please clarify for me, can I walk up to the vault and extract the >gold or must I work through a third party(ies)? If so, then obviously I >need to trust them to uphold their promise to honour the contract. Technically Euro-Dutch Trust Company should be acting on your behalf. >I think Craig is correct when he says, "This is a difference that makes >no difference". That there is quite a bit of difference as is apparent from the explanation above. But you are right in the sense that in the last analysis it isn�t whether the currency is based on gold ownership or is gold backed that is the only important issue. Of even greater importance are the operational structures which are in place which, firstly, would allow for meaningful verification of the physical gold holdings claimed by the currency providers, and secondly, which would mitigate against uses of such holdings to the determent of account holders interests. Our research reveals consumer protection in this regard as generally inadequate across the board. The GoldMoney set-up certainty, on the face of it, appears to give reasonable consumer protection, but we have asked GoldMoney for further information on a number of intrinsic issues concerning their operation in practice before reaching a final conclusion in this regard. Regards, Elzbieta D --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digital Gold Currencies: A Comparative Study of Consumer Protection and Regulatory Issues Part 1 http://www.citydeep.com/nwi_forensicintelligence_publications_general.htm --------------------------------------------------------------------------- ___________________________________________________________________________ http://www.citydeep.com --- 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.
