[00:02.420 --> 00:03.640]  Holding, holding.
[00:10.700 --> 00:12.220]  Welcome to day two of HOPE.
[00:12.560 --> 00:13.600]  This is the first session.
[00:13.780 --> 00:14.580]  We're in track B.
[00:14.880 --> 00:23.180]  This is about e-gold and the man who's going to explain e-gold and why it's not dumb, number 113, Cheshire.
[00:28.270 --> 00:28.970]  Thank you.
[00:29.950 --> 00:32.290]  I'm Richard Cheshire, known as the Cheshire Catalyst.
[00:32.810 --> 00:38.390]  And my friend Jim on the end and his friend Gupta are really the ones who will be explaining e-gold.
[00:38.390 --> 00:44.900]  Now let me... I can read brochures.
[00:45.140 --> 00:51.740]  And this brochure says that e-gold is an alternative Internet payment system that mobilizes the value of gold for Internet payments.
[00:52.160 --> 00:57.940]  e-gold is 100% backed by a reserve of physical gold stored in recognized repositories.
[00:58.820 --> 01:12.520]  The way I like to explain it is that think of it as PayPal backed by gold and not Federal Reserve notes or the full faith and credit of the United States of America.
[01:16.440 --> 01:18.240]  So, Gupta or Jim?
[01:19.320 --> 01:20.380]  Jim gets to start.
[01:20.620 --> 01:20.860]  Thank you.
[01:25.160 --> 01:25.220]  Hi.
[01:25.340 --> 01:29.120]  His name is Venkat and his company is rayservers.com.
[01:29.220 --> 01:32.400]  R-A-Y-S-E-R-V-E-R-S.com.
[01:33.340 --> 01:37.160]  It's one of the older merchants that use e-gold.
[01:37.400 --> 01:46.080]  I was actually hired by the company that became separate from e-gold while e-gold was still a part of it.
[01:46.080 --> 01:48.380]  And I've been with them ever since.
[01:48.820 --> 01:50.640]  The gold really is there.
[01:50.900 --> 01:53.340]  It really is pretty safe.
[01:53.700 --> 01:56.240]  But it's only as safe as you keep your passphrase.
[01:56.920 --> 02:01.080]  e-gold kind of demands that old-fashioned individual responsibility thing.
[02:01.080 --> 02:03.640]  So it draws a certain kind of person.
[02:03.960 --> 02:07.400]  I had thought that the hacker audience would be an easy audience to get.
[02:07.620 --> 02:20.160]  And since they were already linked to PayPal and since I had already been here previously, I thought that, well, it's going to be easy just to get these guys to use something that treats them like adults, lets them gamble, lets them go see porn, doesn't care about,
[02:20.220 --> 02:22.980]  you know, anything as long as it's not going to draw down the government goons.
[02:23.120 --> 02:24.660]  Like, you know, child porn is obviously out.
[02:24.780 --> 02:26.860]  Murder Incorporated, they would frown upon that.
[02:27.000 --> 02:35.100]  But e-gold doesn't really care about a lot of what you folks do that control freaks do care about.
[02:35.100 --> 02:39.400]  And so it draws a community very much like this community.
[02:39.580 --> 02:47.080]  And this community should harness the power of e-gold because, in my heart, this community is very close to me.
[02:47.140 --> 02:47.860]  I really like us.
[02:47.880 --> 02:51.600]  But we're a lot better on free speech than we are on free markets.
[02:51.680 --> 02:53.060]  And that can lead to poverty.
[02:53.620 --> 02:55.460]  And you've got to be good at both.
[02:55.860 --> 02:57.900]  And we're losing that.
[02:57.900 --> 03:01.120]  I've got a couple of examples of United States coinage.
[03:01.700 --> 03:07.400]  And what Venkat's going to talk about is how the Constitution and your money has been hacked.
[03:07.600 --> 03:10.780]  And it's the greatest crack of all time, basically.
[03:11.120 --> 03:12.360]  Your money has been cracked.
[03:12.420 --> 03:14.740]  And this is what your money should look like.
[03:14.860 --> 03:16.440]  A gold or silver coin.
[03:16.820 --> 03:23.580]  And if you read the Constitution, if you read the Bible, if you like the Torah instead, if you like the Koran instead, it doesn't matter.
[03:23.580 --> 03:26.060]  All of them mention what money really is.
[03:26.480 --> 03:29.680]  But a lot of people, you've learned about money since you were very young.
[03:29.960 --> 03:34.040]  And so you think you know what money really is until you really start studying money.
[03:34.420 --> 03:37.620]  And then, suddenly, you realize just how bad things have gotten.
[03:37.940 --> 03:50.340]  And at this point, a bunch of people with basically the electronic version of a printing press have fooled everybody into thinking that the dollar is still backed by something other than faith and, you know, credit and all that.
[03:50.340 --> 03:51.380]  It's not.
[03:51.760 --> 03:54.220]  It used to be backed by something, sort of.
[03:54.720 --> 03:55.440]  But it's just not.
[03:55.620 --> 03:57.160]  Anyway, enough of me.
[03:57.840 --> 04:01.540]  And it's not... It's a weirdly political and apolitical subject.
[04:02.000 --> 04:03.220]  E-gold isn't a political thing.
[04:03.220 --> 04:03.940]  It's just money.
[04:04.120 --> 04:09.420]  But it's a base upon which other forms of really cool money can exist.
[04:09.460 --> 04:10.660]  And do exist already.
[04:11.000 --> 04:13.540]  And so I encourage you to try it out.
[04:13.820 --> 04:15.560]  I encourage you to read more about it.
[04:15.560 --> 04:18.360]  And if you have any questions later, ask me or him.
[04:18.760 --> 04:19.280]  Thank you.
[04:26.580 --> 04:28.140]  So it's a pleasure to be here.
[04:29.300 --> 04:32.040]  I didn't expect to be here even just three weeks ago.
[04:34.020 --> 04:39.480]  Jim gave me a call and said, there's this thing, 2600 hackers.
[04:40.280 --> 04:41.220]  Go and talk to them.
[04:41.820 --> 04:43.880]  And I said, what, me?
[04:44.100 --> 04:44.920]  Talk to hackers?
[04:45.840 --> 04:51.160]  And so here we are, giving you a presentation.
[04:52.760 --> 04:55.680]  A lot of cool things have happened in the last four years.
[04:56.620 --> 04:58.040]  Ray Servers is a small company.
[04:58.320 --> 05:02.580]  We tried to do the online merchant thing.
[05:02.580 --> 05:05.920]  We took credit cards for two days.
[05:08.120 --> 05:10.340]  We got $20,000 in orders.
[05:10.640 --> 05:11.680]  We were very happy.
[05:11.960 --> 05:14.040]  And every one of them was fraudulent.
[05:14.440 --> 05:14.920]  Okay?
[05:15.180 --> 05:21.060]  So if you hear this thing that e-gold has a lot of fraud in it, try credit cards.
[05:22.000 --> 05:22.640]  Okay?
[05:23.160 --> 05:29.300]  So we were looking for a payment solution where when we got paid, we stayed paid.
[05:31.040 --> 05:33.540]  And I had also been following e-gold.
[05:33.960 --> 05:37.880]  They used to have this cool little slogan, and I have it a few slides down.
[05:38.400 --> 05:40.960]  Gold itself electronically circulated.
[05:41.060 --> 05:42.700]  They don't have that anymore, and it's a shame.
[05:45.660 --> 05:50.560]  And what they promise is irreversible payments, and that is true.
[05:51.120 --> 05:56.680]  If you order a laptop from Siberia and you pay with e-gold, I'll be happy to ship it to you.
[05:56.740 --> 05:58.060]  I don't need to know who you are.
[05:58.060 --> 06:00.900]  I know that I've gotten paid, and I will stay paid.
[06:01.060 --> 06:04.240]  And that's what was important to me when I started this.
[06:05.280 --> 06:11.040]  Since then, as Jim says, money is such a fun little topic.
[06:12.160 --> 06:17.960]  I have looked into money for the last four years and come away with some very interesting conclusions.
[06:18.960 --> 06:23.040]  And also, the state of operating systems.
[06:25.680 --> 06:28.300]  You know, we have some very nice technology today.
[06:28.960 --> 06:30.980]  I deal with security all the time.
[06:31.740 --> 06:33.800]  You know, we have got Linux, finally.
[06:34.060 --> 06:42.120]  An open source, free market sort of an operating system, as opposed to the cathedral version of an operating system that I shall not name.
[06:44.400 --> 06:50.720]  We also have all sorts of security issues that have come up on the Internet.
[06:50.940 --> 06:59.940]  Denial of service attacks, spam, and what has interested me is the economic aspect of security.
[06:59.940 --> 07:01.460]  Can you go to the next slide?
[07:08.190 --> 07:08.910]  So, yes.
[07:09.210 --> 07:11.170]  We give thanks to the unknown hacker.
[07:11.690 --> 07:14.310]  I'd like to be thought of as a closet hacker.
[07:14.590 --> 07:16.570]  I don't do this in public.
[07:16.810 --> 07:18.870]  But here I am in front of everybody else.
[07:19.130 --> 07:24.350]  And there are a number of people without which I wouldn't be in business.
[07:25.290 --> 07:28.990]  I can think of Richard Stallman, who was there the other day.
[07:29.830 --> 07:30.750]  So many others.
[07:30.910 --> 07:31.250]  Linus.
[07:32.670 --> 07:33.350]  Anyhow.
[07:33.630 --> 07:35.410]  So, we have some amazing technology.
[07:35.590 --> 07:40.010]  We have open source, secure operating systems.
[07:40.010 --> 07:46.730]  And that could lead to things like self-extending wireless networks, which the technology exists.
[07:47.130 --> 07:49.430]  I'm going to talk about secure operating systems.
[07:49.430 --> 07:55.750]  I'm going to talk about encryption, onion routing, Tor, and MixMaster.
[07:56.030 --> 07:59.710]  And how money can tie into these things.
[08:01.950 --> 08:03.450]  So, life on the Internet today.
[08:03.690 --> 08:05.290]  You all have experienced spam.
[08:05.470 --> 08:06.550]  Spam comes to your inbox.
[08:06.670 --> 08:07.290]  You don't want it.
[08:07.370 --> 08:07.830]  It's there.
[08:09.110 --> 08:11.710]  And then you have denial of service attacks.
[08:11.930 --> 08:12.390]  E-gold.
[08:12.450 --> 08:16.550]  If you go to their site, you'll see there's a small little thing that says prolexic on there.
[08:16.750 --> 08:18.970]  They were taken off the air by a bunch of people.
[08:18.970 --> 08:20.990]  Who just sent them so much information.
[08:21.690 --> 08:25.150]  That it caused an overload on the pipe to their servers.
[08:26.030 --> 08:29.510]  And this is called the tragedy of the commons.
[08:29.710 --> 08:33.870]  If you have studied a little bit of economic history.
[08:34.430 --> 08:38.630]  And it's caused by the fact that it is free to send email.
[08:39.110 --> 08:40.550]  And free to send a packet.
[08:40.910 --> 08:42.210]  Once you connect it to the Internet.
[08:42.210 --> 08:47.290]  You are basically saying, I will receive as many packets as you will send me.
[08:47.830 --> 08:51.210]  And I'm free, therefore, to send you packets.
[08:51.570 --> 08:53.790]  And since there is no cost to it.
[08:53.910 --> 09:00.490]  There is no cost to having insecure operating systems connected to the Internet.
[09:00.990 --> 09:07.070]  And people take it over and can launch a distributed denial of service attack against you.
[09:07.070 --> 09:11.190]  And if you want to stay on the air, you have to pay for the traffic.
[09:11.510 --> 09:17.370]  And that's what denial of service prevention is all about.
[09:17.530 --> 09:18.570]  You need fat pipes.
[09:18.570 --> 09:28.050]  And what it means for the small guy is that if you can't afford to pay $5,000, $10,000 a month in bandwidth charges, you can't be on the air.
[09:28.790 --> 09:39.590]  And therefore, we need an Internet where you can regulate the amount of traffic that goes.
[09:39.790 --> 09:40.990]  I'll get to that in a minute.
[09:41.290 --> 09:42.930]  Then there's content filtering.
[09:42.930 --> 09:46.710]  You have zero-bit encryption.
[09:47.070 --> 09:48.490]  It's called HTTP.
[09:50.850 --> 09:51.530]  Okay?
[09:53.710 --> 09:59.050]  So, people here are interested in freedom of speech and freedom of content and so forth.
[09:59.170 --> 10:01.170]  And then we use HTTP all the time.
[10:01.170 --> 10:04.270]  So, we know who is looking for what.
[10:04.810 --> 10:09.870]  And governments have unlimited power to examine and regulate what you see.
[10:11.010 --> 10:15.090]  And the state of the Internet as we have it today will have to change.
[10:15.230 --> 10:17.010]  And it is changing before our eyes.
[10:17.130 --> 10:25.630]  It's changing due to the economic aspects and due to the security and content monitoring aspects.
[10:25.810 --> 10:27.010]  You can see Tor is starting up.
[10:27.190 --> 10:27.990]  Then we have phishing.
[10:29.430 --> 10:33.170]  Websites that look just like the website you think you were at.
[10:33.850 --> 10:35.630]  And then you have credit card fraud.
[10:36.970 --> 10:41.830]  If in 1850 you went and proposed that you were going to have this long account number.
[10:42.850 --> 10:46.390]  Plus, you know, the expiration date and so forth is just a long string of digits.
[10:46.690 --> 10:48.170]  And you'd give it to a merchant.
[10:48.390 --> 10:54.010]  And then the merchant would have the freedom to charge only what you purchase.
[10:54.850 --> 10:56.830]  Now, that would be a joke back then.
[10:57.310 --> 11:00.490]  You wouldn't trust the merchant with that power.
[11:00.770 --> 11:01.870]  But that's what we have.
[11:02.050 --> 11:04.070]  Online Internet purchases with credit cards.
[11:04.410 --> 11:07.170]  You are trusting the merchant not to overcharge you.
[11:07.590 --> 11:07.750]  Okay?
[11:07.970 --> 11:09.510]  Most merchants are honorable.
[11:10.990 --> 11:17.770]  And unfortunately, it puts the merchant in possession of this information, which is very valuable to criminals.
[11:18.630 --> 11:20.310]  Namely, that string of digits.
[11:20.590 --> 11:22.930]  A credit card number, expiration date, shipping address.
[11:23.430 --> 11:26.530]  Whatever it takes to move value to that.
[11:26.750 --> 11:33.370]  And that is why, as a small business, if you sell something valuable on the Internet, small businesses are the ones that pay for the fraud.
[11:33.370 --> 11:40.870]  Because we can't afford a credit department to chase down, to see you are who you are, and that you really did order that laptop.
[11:44.190 --> 11:50.650]  So, I'm going to talk briefly about profit and economics, and the security implications of such things.
[11:51.730 --> 11:55.650]  So, let's say you had a cow, all right?
[11:56.790 --> 12:01.810]  You had a farm, and you had this cow, and you had to feed it hay, and so forth, and it provided you milk.
[12:02.410 --> 12:10.550]  If the cost of the hay was more than what you would get for the milk that you sold, you would go out of business.
[12:10.550 --> 12:13.430]  That cow would be beef, pretty soon.
[12:14.890 --> 12:15.530]  Okay?
[12:16.250 --> 12:20.410]  And we had to talk about private property, and the tragedy of the commons.
[12:20.650 --> 12:23.330]  Private property is my backyard.
[12:23.330 --> 12:24.330]  It's my backyard.
[12:24.530 --> 12:26.150]  You may not graze your sheep on it.
[12:26.970 --> 12:27.610]  Okay?
[12:28.230 --> 12:37.870]  If you have the Internet as we stand today, and you connect to the Internet, you're saying that anyone can send anything to you.
[12:40.910 --> 12:43.510]  Garbage, that's a denial-of-service attack.
[12:44.370 --> 12:45.590]  Information is power.
[12:47.510 --> 12:57.710]  And the current state of the Internet is very valuable to governments, because they have absolutely enormous access to information.
[12:57.970 --> 13:01.010]  They know what you are talking about.
[13:01.210 --> 13:03.510]  They know who is talking with whom.
[13:03.730 --> 13:16.850]  So even if you do take the trouble to use PGP email, the very fact that two people are in communication could be a problem, which is addressed by something like MixMaster.
[13:18.150 --> 13:19.890]  MixMaster.sourceforge.net.
[13:19.990 --> 13:22.210]  Go read all about it, if you haven't done so already.
[13:22.510 --> 13:25.670]  It's where you do onion routing on email.
[13:26.230 --> 13:37.030]  And the problem with MixMaster is that it requires, or it depends, on people giving away bandwidth, and it gets abused by spammers.
[13:37.030 --> 13:41.350]  So the MixMaster network has basically gone defunct.
[13:41.470 --> 13:42.870]  There's just a very few nodes left.
[13:43.950 --> 13:45.190]  Abuse of privilege.
[13:46.610 --> 13:52.230]  You know, you hear about 40 million credit card numbers were stolen.
[13:52.710 --> 14:01.210]  You hear that such-and-so is looking in on your communications.
[14:02.490 --> 14:03.670]  The taps.
[14:04.110 --> 14:06.530]  AT&T has given away your information.
[14:06.530 --> 14:07.490]  Who you call.
[14:07.690 --> 14:08.590]  And so forth.
[14:09.550 --> 14:16.770]  So the security implications of the economic aspect of the Internet are all around us.
[14:20.310 --> 14:25.790]  So, which brings us, you follow the trail, follow the money, the greatest crack of all time.
[14:26.210 --> 14:31.550]  So now, what you see in this chart is a chart made by this guy, Viking Coder.
[14:31.850 --> 14:35.130]  I don't know who he is, but he hangs out on the eagle list.
[14:35.950 --> 14:46.790]  And I requested him to provide me this chart that you see, which is the Dow Jones Industrial Average measured in ounces of gold.
[14:46.870 --> 14:47.730]  That's the blue line.
[14:48.070 --> 14:59.590]  The yellow line that you see there is the ostensible value of the dollar as a percentage of what it was defined in, I guess it was the 1792 Mint Act.
[15:00.790 --> 15:04.510]  Back then, the dollar was around $20 to the ounce.
[15:04.810 --> 15:05.070]  Okay?
[15:05.150 --> 15:06.170]  You see that flat line.
[15:06.570 --> 15:09.310]  And then you see that giant step coming down.
[15:09.610 --> 15:12.730]  That was when it was devalued to $35 to the ounce.
[15:13.970 --> 15:20.290]  And then you see that line proceed all the way to 1971 when the dollar was delinked from gold.
[15:20.710 --> 15:28.990]  And it fell all the way down to 5% of its original value as measured in grams of gold or ounces of gold.
[15:30.150 --> 15:34.150]  The blue line that you see there is the stock market.
[15:34.150 --> 15:37.290]  How many ounces of gold does it take to purchase the Dow?
[15:37.870 --> 15:38.090]  Okay?
[15:38.730 --> 15:43.270]  That is the equivalent number of shares to create the composite index.
[15:44.470 --> 15:46.010]  So you see this line.
[15:46.230 --> 15:48.750]  It's got three... the blue line's got a few peaks.
[15:49.510 --> 15:55.750]  And when you look at that and you think of the money supply and you see why is there a peak?
[15:56.970 --> 16:01.770]  It's because when the government creates money, the first thing it does is chase assets.
[16:02.510 --> 16:05.230]  The assets in this case are stocks.
[16:05.730 --> 16:12.970]  People who are trading cash for stocks are really trading one form of money for another form of money.
[16:13.230 --> 16:13.790]  Okay?
[16:14.170 --> 16:17.830]  So the question, what is money, is a very interesting question.
[16:17.970 --> 16:21.190]  And I could spend weeks talking about that.
[16:21.690 --> 16:25.630]  And everyone you talk to thinks that they know what money is.
[16:26.350 --> 16:31.670]  How many of you here have had the experience of being taught in public school what money is?
[16:34.650 --> 16:35.190]  Okay.
[16:35.570 --> 16:36.870]  And what did they teach you?
[16:38.430 --> 16:40.070]  I like some interaction here.
[16:41.990 --> 16:42.830]  Not much.
[16:43.210 --> 16:45.510]  Captain Kangaroo told me that it was a medium of exchange.
[16:46.050 --> 16:46.590]  Okay.
[16:46.690 --> 16:47.550]  It's a medium of exchange.
[16:47.550 --> 16:48.310]  That's a good thing.
[16:48.810 --> 16:49.010]  Yeah.
[16:49.210 --> 16:55.230]  Some artificial construct that represents a value that both parties agree upon in an exchange.
[16:55.230 --> 16:55.910]  Okay.
[16:56.050 --> 16:56.170]  Great.
[16:56.890 --> 17:03.230]  So now if we exchange, there are two kinds of money here.
[17:03.650 --> 17:07.490]  I have a gold coin in my pocket and you have a valuable laptop.
[17:07.970 --> 17:08.110]  All right?
[17:08.250 --> 17:09.550]  We decide to do a trade.
[17:10.030 --> 17:12.710]  You hand me the laptop and I hand you the gold coin.
[17:12.830 --> 17:13.490]  You made a trade.
[17:13.950 --> 17:16.710]  You've agreed upon the one ounce price for that laptop.
[17:16.710 --> 17:18.010]  We did the trade.
[17:18.150 --> 17:18.990]  It was mutually beneficial.
[17:19.190 --> 17:23.210]  You're now the owner of the gold coin and I'm now the owner of the laptop.
[17:23.850 --> 17:24.010]  Great.
[17:24.150 --> 17:24.670]  This is trade.
[17:25.310 --> 17:29.370]  So now let's say we had what it is today, about $630.
[17:30.110 --> 17:30.590]  Okay.
[17:30.950 --> 17:32.910]  So what it costs to buy a low-end laptop.
[17:33.970 --> 17:35.790]  So I hand you $630.
[17:35.950 --> 17:37.090]  You hand me the laptop.
[17:37.630 --> 17:38.890]  Is it the same thing?
[17:39.750 --> 17:40.050]  No.
[17:43.340 --> 17:43.720]  Why?
[17:44.540 --> 17:45.440]  It's in paper.
[17:46.300 --> 17:46.780]  Right.
[17:47.300 --> 17:48.740]  And there's one more thing.
[17:49.440 --> 17:51.960]  The first transaction and the second transaction.
[17:52.180 --> 17:55.340]  Tell me how many parties there were to each of these two transactions.
[17:55.900 --> 17:59.280]  In the first case with the gold coin, there are just two people involved in the trade.
[17:59.600 --> 18:00.940]  You and the guy with the laptop.
[18:01.660 --> 18:02.700]  Money changes hands.
[18:02.860 --> 18:03.920]  In this case the gold coin.
[18:04.120 --> 18:05.420]  The laptop changes hands.
[18:05.420 --> 18:10.420]  In the case of the paper, you're using the paper issued by a third party.
[18:10.840 --> 18:12.460]  So the third party comes into it.
[18:12.840 --> 18:12.960]  Okay.
[18:14.160 --> 18:18.240]  So the full faith and credit of the United States government comes into it.
[18:18.880 --> 18:20.800]  We all know how much that's worth these days.
[18:22.080 --> 18:28.980]  So if I am to do anything today, I would like to leave you with some questions that you have to ask.
[18:29.300 --> 18:31.700]  If you look at this chart, it's a fairly long-term chart.
[18:31.700 --> 18:34.820]  It starts from 1900 and goes to now roughly.
[18:35.200 --> 18:37.880]  It was actually until January of 2006.
[18:39.880 --> 18:48.260]  And why does it do what it does in this chart is a question for which I'm not going to give you more than a hint of an answer.
[18:48.720 --> 18:55.180]  You can look at this chart and superimpose upon it all the historical events of the last century.
[18:56.200 --> 18:59.420]  And maybe get a glimpse of what is to come.
[19:00.620 --> 19:00.740]  Okay.
[19:01.560 --> 19:09.220]  And you could also read the history of money and banking in the United States by Murray Rothbard.
[19:09.440 --> 19:10.640]  It's a fascinating book.
[19:11.800 --> 19:16.380]  Kind of dry if you're not interested in money, but it's the history of the last hundred years or so.
[19:16.380 --> 19:18.020]  Maybe a little more.
[19:18.960 --> 19:21.280]  Without the politics and just the money.
[19:22.620 --> 19:28.140]  And you can read between the lines and remember what you were taught in history and connect the dots.
[19:28.920 --> 19:32.560]  It's the money that drives the politics and not the politics that drives the money.
[19:35.720 --> 19:37.560]  So it comes back to e-gold.
[19:37.770 --> 19:40.240]  E-gold is gold itself, electronically circulated.
[19:40.240 --> 19:43.660]  And it's a hard irreversible payment system.
[19:43.920 --> 19:56.140]  They have an automation interface where you can actually set up an account where you can create a secondary digital currency backed by e-gold.
[19:56.460 --> 19:57.820]  Why would you want to do that?
[19:58.200 --> 20:06.030]  Because someone can redeem that currency that you have created into e-gold.
[20:06.030 --> 20:09.920]  So people would trust e-gold more than they would trust your currency.
[20:10.480 --> 20:18.180]  So that redemption might be an automated way for you to prove that you've got value, quote-unquote, in your account.
[20:18.400 --> 20:18.510]  Okay?
[20:19.820 --> 20:20.340]  So...
[20:20.340 --> 20:21.860]  Can we go to the next slide, please?
[20:23.400 --> 20:26.460]  My friend Patrick, he has created this site.
[20:26.620 --> 20:28.980]  Those of you with laptops and wireless can go check it out.
[20:29.120 --> 20:30.060]  Loom.cc.
[20:30.540 --> 20:32.720]  It's an interesting site.
[20:32.720 --> 20:44.460]  He, independently of me, came up with this concept of using strong random numbers, which he calls locations at which to squirrel away some gold.
[20:44.740 --> 20:44.880]  Okay?
[20:45.460 --> 20:55.640]  And the version of Loom that you see there on that site, he uses the hash of a passphrase to generate a 128-bit number at which the gold is stored.
[20:55.640 --> 20:56.060]  Okay?
[20:56.740 --> 21:02.480]  So you can create a strong random location to put value at that location.
[21:04.530 --> 21:08.880]  So, it's an interesting way of creating irreversible transactions.
[21:09.950 --> 21:13.200]  It sort of models the gold coin standard.
[21:13.700 --> 21:13.840]  Okay?
[21:14.730 --> 21:21.820]  You go to the merchant, and you purchase this microphone, and you go to the checkout counter, and you say, I want to buy this thing.
[21:21.820 --> 21:25.530]  So, it scans it and says, one ounce.
[21:25.770 --> 21:35.120]  So, you take your ounce coin, and you place it on the counter, which is a common shared location, so to speak, in physical space.
[21:35.380 --> 21:38.480]  The merchant picks it up and puts it in his cash still.
[21:38.660 --> 21:47.640]  So, it has gone from your private location in your wallet to a shared common location on the table, and then moved to the cash still.
[21:47.640 --> 21:48.140]  Okay?
[21:48.740 --> 21:50.680]  So, this is exactly what you can do with Loom.
[21:53.500 --> 21:58.960]  So, Loom is tiered on top of another currency, 1MDC.
[21:59.320 --> 22:04.340]  If you go to 1MDC.com, it's not on this slide, but it's on my site.
[22:04.740 --> 22:07.700]  1MDC is just like Eagle.
[22:07.920 --> 22:12.580]  It's not as complex as Patrick's, or I should say Patrick's is simpler in some sense.
[22:13.660 --> 22:16.460]  It's the number one.
[22:16.740 --> 22:17.300]  Yes.
[22:17.620 --> 22:17.760]  One.
[22:17.880 --> 22:18.480]  Numeral one.
[22:18.580 --> 22:20.540]  1MDC.com, numeral one.
[22:20.860 --> 22:21.300]  Okay.
[22:21.600 --> 22:22.020]  You got that?
[22:22.720 --> 22:24.640]  1MDC.com, numeral one.
[22:26.660 --> 22:28.980]  And this is this guy, JP May.
[22:29.640 --> 22:33.620]  And I know a lot of people who have stored considerable value in his currency.
[22:33.940 --> 22:35.440]  He doesn't have a user agreement.
[22:36.440 --> 22:38.060]  It's just reputation.
[22:38.060 --> 22:42.880]  So, he has a reputation for keeping your money safe.
[22:43.140 --> 22:44.520]  How trustworthy is that?
[22:44.940 --> 22:47.360]  It is like Cheshire.
[22:47.680 --> 22:48.840]  Here's an ounce of gold.
[22:49.060 --> 22:50.020]  Can you store it for me?
[22:50.200 --> 22:52.480]  If I trust him, well, I trust him.
[22:52.700 --> 22:53.060]  Okay?
[22:54.260 --> 23:00.000]  So, there's trust involved in any transaction where you store money with someone else.
[23:00.240 --> 23:03.500]  There's trust involved in storing money at a big bank.
[23:03.500 --> 23:05.260]  Let's say you bank with Citibank.
[23:05.440 --> 23:08.300]  You go and put your hard-earned dollars there.
[23:08.520 --> 23:10.220]  You expect them to keep it safe.
[23:12.990 --> 23:13.750]  Do they?
[23:16.710 --> 23:26.790]  If you know what the cash reserve ratio is, and if you knew that for every dollar on deposit, they lend out close to $100, you'd be worried.
[23:27.270 --> 23:27.810]  Okay?
[23:29.270 --> 23:38.250]  The total savings and checking account value in the United States is 5 point something trillion dollars.
[23:38.730 --> 23:44.950]  And it's backed by about 45 or 43, I think it's coming down, million dollars.
[23:45.250 --> 23:51.070]  So, for every $100 you have on deposit, they have about 93 cents.
[23:53.550 --> 23:54.350]  FDIC insured.
[23:54.630 --> 23:59.130]  So, if the bank goes down the tube, you get out to fill a piece of paper and hope for the best.
[23:59.510 --> 24:03.430]  And the Federal Reserve will magically come to the rescue, print out some fresh money, and hand it to you.
[24:05.270 --> 24:08.830]  So, that's the full fate and credit of the United States.
[24:09.070 --> 24:10.490]  And it's a fun topic.
[24:10.650 --> 24:12.930]  It gets political very quick, so I won't dwell on it.
[24:12.930 --> 24:19.410]  But I'll go back to speaking about Loom and how that would tie into creating digital cash.
[24:19.890 --> 24:20.010]  Okay?
[24:20.590 --> 24:23.570]  Everyone here has heard about regular old digital cash.
[24:23.750 --> 24:24.850]  There is the certificate.
[24:25.130 --> 24:25.690]  It's signed.
[24:25.750 --> 24:28.330]  You need PGP keys kind of a thing.
[24:28.330 --> 24:29.990]  And it's very complicated.
[24:30.390 --> 24:33.010]  And only a hacker could use this money.
[24:33.690 --> 24:35.150]  You know, ordinary people can't.
[24:35.370 --> 24:48.950]  But with Patrick's currency, you can have practically anonymous cash by using these strong random locations for a store of value and managing it with another layer on top of that.
[24:49.250 --> 24:55.310]  You could create a wallet which maintains and keeps track of these strong random locations.
[24:56.010 --> 24:56.450]  Okay?
[24:57.330 --> 25:01.650]  And that wallet could look just like PayPal.
[25:02.790 --> 25:03.230]  Okay?
[25:03.650 --> 25:06.570]  Behind the scenes, there are these individual coins.
[25:07.690 --> 25:08.030]  Okay?
[25:08.570 --> 25:12.690]  You could do a payment system where two wallets talk to one another.
[25:13.830 --> 25:19.970]  So, if I were to trade you, you had, let's say, U.S. dollars in a loom-like currency.
[25:20.230 --> 25:22.130]  You had gold in a loom-like currency.
[25:22.310 --> 25:25.030]  And we wanted to do a million-dollar trade.
[25:25.670 --> 25:28.250]  Usually, there is a problem when you want to do a million-dollar trade.
[25:28.370 --> 25:29.530]  You trust the other guy.
[25:29.730 --> 25:32.750]  The guy who pays first is at risk.
[25:33.630 --> 25:38.230]  The guy who pays first, the other guy could say, sorry, I don't know you.
[25:38.630 --> 25:40.270]  And over the Internet, that is a problem.
[25:40.770 --> 25:46.650]  But with this sort of a wallet construction, you can actually do it without putting the entire amount at risk.
[25:46.650 --> 25:53.370]  What you do is you put, let's say, a dollar at a time and a dollar worth of e-gold in the other direction.
[25:53.570 --> 26:00.590]  So, the two wallets talk to each other and hand a receipt back to the other one saying, Yep, I got the dollar.
[26:00.830 --> 26:03.270]  And yep, I got the dollar's worth of gold.
[26:03.550 --> 26:11.110]  So, you can actually do transactions, high-value transactions, without putting the amount at risk and without the need of an escrow.
[26:11.950 --> 26:12.430]  Okay?
[26:13.050 --> 26:18.830]  So, what I've just said also can be translated to selling laptops.
[26:19.810 --> 26:20.230]  Okay?
[26:20.490 --> 26:21.630]  So, how do you do that?
[26:21.910 --> 26:23.010]  You can take a laptop.
[26:23.210 --> 26:24.110]  It's got value.
[26:24.970 --> 26:26.230]  Let's say it's worth a thousand dollars.
[26:26.230 --> 26:28.530]  You can sell shares on a laptop.
[26:29.030 --> 26:30.150]  One dollar a share.
[26:30.610 --> 26:33.990]  Anyone who shows up with a thousand shares walks away with a laptop.
[26:34.510 --> 26:46.530]  And so, you can create a market, peer-to-peer, decent market of laptops, houses, boats.
[26:47.030 --> 26:49.190]  You can do that with strong random numbers.
[26:49.730 --> 26:50.110]  Okay?
[26:51.530 --> 26:53.890]  So, how does this become anonymous?
[26:53.890 --> 27:05.730]  It can become anonymous by putting Tor or an onion-routed layer in between the user and the wallet that is maintaining the store of value.
[27:06.210 --> 27:07.990]  Let's say Ray Servers issues laptops.
[27:08.450 --> 27:12.410]  Those laptops are on a node run by Ray Servers.
[27:13.070 --> 27:20.190]  And we don't care who shows up with a thousand shares and takes a laptop.
[27:20.190 --> 27:26.950]  So, we are happy to take whatever one thousandth the price of the laptop is from the first guy who shows up.
[27:27.070 --> 27:29.690]  So, you can have a savings account denominated in laptops.
[27:30.510 --> 27:30.950]  Okay?
[27:31.630 --> 27:33.990]  So, this laptop is for a future delivery.
[27:34.170 --> 27:36.490]  It's for delivery in January of 2007.
[27:37.130 --> 27:39.150]  So, there you go.
[27:39.150 --> 27:42.910]  And if I can pre-sell that thing, I've done one more thing.
[27:43.090 --> 27:46.170]  It's that I've now got cash flow.
[27:47.070 --> 27:47.610]  Okay?
[27:48.170 --> 27:49.870]  So, this is powerful stuff.
[27:50.750 --> 27:54.190]  It's the futures market can be modeled with strong random numbers.
[27:54.610 --> 27:55.010]  Okay?
[27:55.770 --> 27:57.450]  So, if you...
[27:57.450 --> 28:00.570]  Why am I here talking to you and telling you all this?
[28:00.770 --> 28:03.970]  It's a bunch of hackers that can put this and make this into reality.
[28:04.250 --> 28:04.710]  Okay?
[28:05.090 --> 28:11.010]  And if ten people make ten different gold currencies and make it a reality, great.
[28:11.630 --> 28:17.130]  And as Jim says, if more e-gold versions spring up, great.
[28:17.250 --> 28:18.090]  It brings them competition.
[28:18.310 --> 28:20.190]  It makes them get better.
[28:20.710 --> 28:24.050]  Competition is what brings us new things all the time.
[28:24.050 --> 28:30.050]  You walk into a grocery store and look at the variety of choices that you have in front of you.
[28:30.450 --> 28:31.670]  So, now, that is choice.
[28:32.170 --> 28:40.250]  Should I spend my dollar on cereal, milk, fresh vegetables, you know, 15 different kinds of soy milk?
[28:40.430 --> 28:42.930]  You know, I mean, it's just... the variety is amazing.
[28:43.350 --> 28:47.010]  And people tell you that in politics you have a choice.
[28:47.250 --> 28:48.330]  Don't believe them.
[28:49.090 --> 28:51.270]  The free market is what gives you choice.
[28:51.850 --> 28:55.090]  In politics, you're forced to make a fake choice.
[28:55.550 --> 28:55.950]  Choice.
[28:57.310 --> 29:02.650]  So, anyway, I'm not going to get into politics, but let's stick to the free market and free speech.
[29:03.030 --> 29:07.050]  So, now, at a strong random number location, you could store encrypted data.
[29:07.050 --> 29:12.750]  It doesn't have to be money, things.
[29:13.310 --> 29:13.650]  Okay?
[29:14.050 --> 29:20.310]  So, if you were to hand off a music file to somebody, you just have to reveal the location where you put it.
[29:21.350 --> 29:21.850]  Okay?
[29:21.850 --> 29:21.910]  Okay?
[29:22.210 --> 29:30.630]  So, it is a way by which you can have economically viable sharing, economically viable Tor.
[29:30.990 --> 29:31.390]  Okay?
[29:31.630 --> 29:34.110]  The Tor nodes have to pay each other for the traffic.
[29:34.130 --> 29:38.690]  And they get paid, in turn, by the users of the Tor system.
[29:39.010 --> 29:46.430]  Right now, the users of the Tor system are far in excess in number than those who donate bandwidth.
[29:46.430 --> 29:53.510]  And those who donate bandwidth do it out of this feeling of goodwill, promoting free speech, and so on.
[29:53.770 --> 29:53.890]  Okay?
[29:54.310 --> 29:59.810]  So, now, if you can make it profitable to run a Tor node, imagine what would happen.
[30:00.990 --> 30:06.730]  You would have an anonymous encrypted Internet.
[30:09.550 --> 30:11.030]  Wouldn't you guys like that?
[30:11.650 --> 30:13.390]  Wouldn't you guys like to surf?
[30:13.610 --> 30:17.170]  And no one would know who you are, and what you are looking at.
[30:18.110 --> 30:22.670]  And it provides benefits for the providers of content.
[30:22.670 --> 30:27.490]  You could set up a website, and no one needs to know where your servers are.
[30:27.630 --> 30:29.110]  So, they can't come and shut you down.
[30:29.990 --> 30:30.410]  Okay?
[30:31.450 --> 30:37.690]  You could do things like data storage on the Internet, which is paid.
[30:38.030 --> 30:42.310]  You can arrange for the payment of the transfer of data.
[30:42.510 --> 30:45.310]  And you can arrange for the payment of the storage of data.
[30:45.490 --> 30:49.770]  And you can do it in a way that no one knows that you are storing this information.
[30:49.770 --> 30:53.610]  And that information can be encrypted to your private key.
[30:53.790 --> 31:00.290]  And so, the person providing the data storage doesn't have to know that you are storing the data.
[31:00.510 --> 31:05.330]  It becomes profitable for that person to provide you remote storage.
[31:07.650 --> 31:10.210]  One of the things that we sell are secure laptops.
[31:10.530 --> 31:11.690]  So, we have this laptop.
[31:12.030 --> 31:13.170]  We use Loop AES.
[31:13.850 --> 31:17.750]  If you want to read about Loop AES, go to loopas.sourceforge.net.
[31:17.750 --> 31:20.650]  It's a beautiful little module for the Linux kernel.
[31:20.950 --> 31:23.210]  You can create a completely encrypted laptop.
[31:23.550 --> 31:25.230]  No partition table even on disk.
[31:27.070 --> 31:30.850]  But, it's still... the data is on your drive.
[31:31.170 --> 31:33.710]  You can have someone show up with a rubber hose.
[31:33.850 --> 31:35.170]  It's called rubber hose decryption.
[31:35.470 --> 31:39.690]  You know, beat you until they give them the password or the USB stick or whatever it is.
[31:39.690 --> 31:48.990]  But, if your data is just out there, you can conceivably create an OpEx CD that boots up.
[31:49.610 --> 31:53.130]  And you type a passphrase with enough entropy in it.
[31:53.650 --> 31:59.270]  And that unlocks your wallet, which is on the Internet.
[31:59.510 --> 32:00.410]  It gets downloaded.
[32:00.670 --> 32:04.030]  And you get access to your data, which is out there somewhere.
[32:04.630 --> 32:07.250]  Someone's storing it for you because you're paying them to store it.
[32:08.670 --> 32:11.890]  And you can surf and no one can see where you're going.
[32:12.710 --> 32:14.250]  You'll have to pay for your surfing.
[32:14.630 --> 32:18.390]  But, actually, when you do this, you can have robotic markets.
[32:18.710 --> 32:29.090]  So, a node can charge, say, this node I'm creating is going to charge n milligrams of gold or n cents to store a gigabyte of data.
[32:29.090 --> 32:29.630]  Okay?
[32:30.230 --> 32:30.830]  Okay.
[32:32.530 --> 32:41.030]  And, if you do that, another node could spring up, which could charge n minus one milligrams of gold.
[32:41.230 --> 32:41.490]  Okay?
[32:41.630 --> 32:43.630]  So, you can have robotic free markets.
[32:44.590 --> 32:49.630]  And, the advantage to that is that those who charge too little will go out of business.
[32:49.910 --> 32:53.290]  Those who charge too much won't have people coming to them.
[32:53.290 --> 33:03.970]  And, therefore, you will get cheap, the lowest price, the best security, and it will be economically viable security.
[33:04.730 --> 33:05.530]  Any questions?
[33:07.930 --> 33:08.830]  Yes, please.
[33:14.360 --> 33:17.440]  And, when you have questions, please come up to the microphone so we can record it.
[33:19.400 --> 33:20.200]  Thanks very much.
[33:20.320 --> 33:25.520]  I wanted to say, anonymous cash always scares the issuers of cash very much.
[33:25.520 --> 33:26.960]  You know, if anyone says it.
[33:27.280 --> 33:29.200]  E-gold isn't anonymous.
[33:29.440 --> 33:31.260]  But, obviously, I think, I agree with Venkat.
[33:31.520 --> 33:37.260]  Patrick's Loom CC thing is close to it as things get on the Internet today and is very cool.
[33:38.020 --> 33:42.600]  But, with E-gold, please provide them with your accurate contact information.
[33:42.600 --> 33:44.720]  Because, when, not if, you lose your passphrase.
[33:44.720 --> 33:46.680]  You could otherwise lose all of your E-gold.
[33:46.780 --> 33:47.700]  And, I don't want that to happen.
[33:48.140 --> 33:56.860]  If you want to try E-gold for free, you can email me, oddsman, that's O-D-D-S-M-A-N, at gmail.com.
[33:58.160 --> 34:01.880]  And, just tell me your account number or, you know, email me and I'll send you something.
[34:02.000 --> 34:03.960]  Because, there's a one level referral system.
[34:04.100 --> 34:06.560]  But, every time people start thinking of that, they start thinking of MLM.
[34:06.640 --> 34:07.900]  And, I don't want to talk about MLM.
[34:08.160 --> 34:10.900]  I don't want to talk much, but I will, about criminals.
[34:11.260 --> 34:15.200]  I don't want to talk about phishing, because, you know, our phishers are the worst.
[34:15.440 --> 34:20.160]  I don't even want to talk about Ponzi schemes, because the E-gold Ponzi schemes put Ponzi himself to shame.
[34:20.460 --> 34:24.000]  You know, because, people are so economically illiterate.
[34:24.100 --> 34:28.140]  And, telling an audience, hey, you guys, you're all economically illiterate, isn't exactly popular speech.
[34:28.300 --> 34:32.280]  You know, I can only make that kind of speech directly and be that honest in front of hackers.
[34:32.420 --> 34:33.740]  But, I'm hoping that I can.
[34:34.060 --> 34:41.580]  Anyways, what I really wanted to tell you also, that I forgot to say in the beginning is, that you're standing in front of the guy who could have saved Napster.
[34:41.900 --> 34:42.300]  How?
[34:42.580 --> 34:43.500]  Well, I'll tell you how.
[34:45.080 --> 34:50.700]  Napster, what happened with the music business is like Courtney Love's rant, or something like that.
[34:50.840 --> 34:55.480]  You know, off of a $15 CD, the artist maybe gets 30 or 45 cents.
[34:55.860 --> 35:00.780]  Generally, a person who likes a song, hell, if I like a beer, the waitress gets a dollar.
[35:01.280 --> 35:06.680]  So, directly connecting fans with artists economically, not just by speech.
[35:06.680 --> 35:10.460]  There's no Warner Brothers filter between Time Warner and me.
[35:10.860 --> 35:22.520]  If I can give, you know, Ted Nugent, or whoever I want, a buck's worth of e-gold, or a tenth of a gram of e-gold, directly, then the only fees that are taken out, the only thing that's taken out, is e-gold's tiny fee.
[35:22.600 --> 35:23.800]  And yes, I want to make money.
[35:23.860 --> 35:26.920]  I'm a greedy capitalist, libertarian, jerk, you know.
[35:27.080 --> 35:30.000]  I definitely want your money, and that's why I'm doing all this stuff.
[35:30.000 --> 35:32.920]  And even worse, the company's not paying me.
[35:33.000 --> 35:35.400]  I pay to go do this stuff, because I like hackers.
[35:35.600 --> 35:37.060]  But let's do some interaction.
[35:37.280 --> 35:39.000]  Please come up to the mic if you have any questions.
[35:40.780 --> 35:41.420]  No questions.
[35:47.880 --> 35:53.200]  I can hear you, but I don't know if anyone else can.
[35:53.200 --> 35:54.520]  We need a question.
[35:57.100 --> 35:58.380]  Getting audio on it right now.
[35:58.700 --> 35:59.560]  Sorry about that.
[35:59.960 --> 36:00.660]  There you go.
[36:01.120 --> 36:01.540]  You should have it.
[36:02.180 --> 36:17.340]  Those of us who are interested in this and do not, as of yet, have any money in e-gold form, how would we go about transferring any amounts of federally backed money to this, and what are the ramifications...
[36:17.340 --> 36:18.500]  There we go.
[36:19.160 --> 36:21.040]  To repeat for the tape and for everyone else.
[36:21.120 --> 36:21.900]  I was asking...
[36:23.800 --> 36:40.320]  I was asking if someone is interested in this and wants to transfer more traditional or current federally backed money into e-gold, what mechanisms are present, and if you're comfortable answering, what sort of reporting to other authority mechanisms are part of such a transaction?
[36:40.840 --> 36:45.900]  I know, for instance, moving more than $10,000 around in most instances is all logged and so forth.
[36:46.280 --> 36:47.180]  Good question.
[36:47.180 --> 36:53.620]  If you go to stats.e-gold.com right now, you'll see the geekiest portion of the e-gold page.
[36:53.760 --> 36:54.540]  It's kind of the heartbeat.
[36:54.880 --> 37:00.260]  And I think the biggest transaction that just happened in the last 24 hours was 14 kilos.
[37:01.040 --> 37:07.480]  So, as for reporting, you know, e-gold is going to go after you if you're a criminal and help the feds, okay?
[37:07.680 --> 37:10.700]  I mean, if you want to do Murder Incorporated, go elsewhere, alright?
[37:11.100 --> 37:17.460]  But, as far as, you know, if you're saying politically or selling politically incorrect stuff, they don't care.
[37:18.120 --> 37:19.260]  Now, how to get e-gold?
[37:19.340 --> 37:23.460]  Instant gratification, email oddsman at gmail.com, and I'll click you some right away.
[37:23.880 --> 37:31.240]  That's one of the problems with e-gold, though, is that, you know, they weren't able to fling money around like PayPal, 10 bucks for the referrer and 10 bucks for the guy.
[37:32.300 --> 37:36.880]  They don't have much of a marketing budget at all because it's so low fees.
[37:37.140 --> 37:46.260]  So, there are a bunch of independent exchangers, and e-gold doesn't want to take the risk of selling e-gold because that would ultimately risk your e-gold that e-gold stores for you.
[37:46.380 --> 37:48.320]  So, there's a zillion independent exchangers.
[37:48.320 --> 37:52.780]  We had to use, we had to break PayPal's terms of service with one of them.
[37:52.880 --> 37:59.960]  And I'm not going to say which because I don't want to get him in trouble in order to get here because the hackers wouldn't take the hacker-friendly currency.
[37:59.960 --> 38:02.760]  They took the hacker-unfriendly currency, which is okay.
[38:02.960 --> 38:05.200]  I mean, I'm struggling through it, psychologically.
[38:05.340 --> 38:06.420]  I'm a big failure.
[38:06.580 --> 38:10.660]  But what's weird is that I fail in these markets where I think, God, this would be uneasy.
[38:10.940 --> 38:14.580]  And then I succeed, things drop in my lap, and I never know what the hell I did right.
[38:15.100 --> 38:16.400]  But, did I answer your question?
[38:17.440 --> 38:18.060]  Pretty much.
[38:18.480 --> 38:23.880]  I don't know if you wanted to go briefly into asset reporting and what taxes, ramifications of taxes.
[38:24.360 --> 38:26.120]  Everybody's responsible for their own taxes.
[38:26.480 --> 38:27.980]  E-gold doesn't send you out any paper.
[38:28.160 --> 38:33.320]  And another thing, okay, e-gold is not going to sell your personal information to any advertiser of any sort.
[38:35.280 --> 38:38.000]  Please, give them your real street address and phone number.
[38:38.120 --> 38:39.220]  I'm not going to call you.
[38:39.340 --> 38:40.600]  I don't want to annoy you on the phone.
[38:40.700 --> 38:42.340]  I don't want to make other people annoy you on the phone.
[38:42.340 --> 38:50.300]  Ultimately, the efficiency of e-gold micropayments might allow you someday to sell your information and you profit from it for once.
[38:50.440 --> 38:53.500]  And that would be a great way to initially fund e-gold accounts.
[38:53.780 --> 39:02.160]  Back when PayPal was starting up, I used to fund e-gold accounts by having a PayPal account and referring others and then making them spend their initial 10 bucks to me.
[39:02.360 --> 39:05.040]  But PayPal got wind of that and they didn't like it too much.
[39:05.220 --> 39:06.300]  So I quit doing it.
[39:06.520 --> 39:06.820]  Thank you.
[39:07.320 --> 39:07.760]  No problem.
[39:10.360 --> 39:19.220]  Didn't the Federal Reserve Act, when it was originally enacted, legalize the trade of gold directly for goods and services in the United States?
[39:20.240 --> 39:21.300]  Oh, gosh.
[39:21.480 --> 39:22.820]  It's sort of a legal question.
[39:23.020 --> 39:25.360]  But there were...
[39:25.360 --> 39:25.780]  Yeah.
[39:27.540 --> 39:32.980]  It changed back in the Carter administration with the deregulation of airlines and other deregulations.
[39:32.980 --> 39:38.680]  But, yes, there was a gold confiscation under FDR that a lot of people think is unconstitutional.
[39:38.940 --> 39:40.620]  And now we're going to delve into politics again.
[39:40.740 --> 39:43.840]  And I don't really care that much about politics because I'm so...
[39:43.840 --> 39:45.820]  I'm such a loser in politics, you know.
[39:45.820 --> 39:46.220]  Neither do I care about politics.
[39:46.220 --> 39:47.600]  I want free speech and economics.
[39:47.800 --> 39:48.100]  Huh?
[39:48.180 --> 39:49.540]  I don't care about politics either.
[39:49.660 --> 39:52.460]  I care about whether or not I'd go to federal prison eventually for doing this.
[39:52.700 --> 39:59.260]  Well, at this point, for example, Osama Bin Laden is out on the loose, but you're safe from BetOnSports.com.
[39:59.540 --> 40:08.960]  So, I mean, I'm scared to mention the casinos by name that take e-gold, even though I'm well-known on the Internet by name, you know, Jim Ray, Oddsman, is a huge fan of a certain casino.
[40:08.960 --> 40:10.240]  I'm scared to mention it anymore.
[40:10.640 --> 40:12.180]  You know, if I say it here, who knows?
[40:12.280 --> 40:13.920]  They might want to get me.
[40:13.920 --> 40:16.040]  They arrested people in Florida on that raid.
[40:16.200 --> 40:18.280]  The guy was stopping over for a flight in Costa Rica.
[40:18.480 --> 40:20.580]  A UK citizen who lives in Costa Rica.
[40:21.000 --> 40:22.900]  So, is it legal to trade this e-gold?
[40:22.900 --> 40:23.620]  Yeah, it is.
[40:23.740 --> 40:25.060]  It's just, you know, there's scary stuff.
[40:25.200 --> 40:26.860]  I mean, e-gold's been around since 1996.
[40:26.980 --> 40:30.640]  If it were illegal, when they busted into the office, they'd have stopped it for good.
[40:31.040 --> 40:35.120]  Instead, they busted into the office and started an endless lawsuit about which I cannot talk at all.
[40:36.460 --> 40:37.240]  Okay, thank you.
[40:37.240 --> 40:40.140]  Except to say that the lawyers are getting way too rich off of it.
[40:42.820 --> 40:43.480]  Don't laugh.
[40:44.140 --> 40:44.540]  Yes?
[40:46.360 --> 40:49.880]  I guess two quick questions that are sort of interrelated.
[40:50.880 --> 40:56.280]  One being, the last time I checked the e-gold's website, what you guys did was you had some sort of account maintenance fee.
[40:56.280 --> 41:03.860]  Whereas, once you put in money that every month or every year or some odd, you take a little bit out in order to maintain the site and so forth.
[41:03.960 --> 41:04.620]  Do you still do this?
[41:05.180 --> 41:05.620]  Correct.
[41:06.320 --> 41:08.240]  E-gold charges two kinds of fees.
[41:08.540 --> 41:14.020]  A very small storage fee to repay from the repositories where they store in.
[41:14.120 --> 41:20.600]  And a very small spend fee to pay for people like the various geeks they've hired instead of hiring a huge marketing department.
[41:20.760 --> 41:21.080]  Of course.
[41:21.080 --> 41:31.980]  However, if you were... okay, let's say you started in 1996 and you had an ounce of gold in e-gold dwindling away at 1% a year until now.
[41:32.520 --> 41:37.100]  And you had an ounce of gold in 1996 worth of U.S. dollars getting interest.
[41:37.380 --> 41:37.620]  Okay?
[41:37.840 --> 41:41.180]  Compound interest, for heaven's sakes, in a bank since 1996.
[41:41.880 --> 41:47.020]  You're ahead in terms of USD at this point with e-gold, you know, despite all of e-gold's horrible fees.
[41:47.020 --> 41:52.660]  And some of e-gold's horrible fees actually come back to you in that incentive program that I don't really want to talk about.
[41:53.060 --> 41:56.420]  Because then people confuse e-gold with an MLM thing, which it's not.
[41:56.720 --> 41:57.040]  Right.
[41:58.120 --> 42:06.160]  My second question being is that I respect your guys' right to make money off of this, obviously, because you're in this, of course, as a business.
[42:06.160 --> 42:14.240]  But if I go to another bank and I open an account with a bank, they don't charge me a recurring fee to keep that account open.
[42:14.440 --> 42:15.600]  Why did you choose this?
[42:16.100 --> 42:19.400]  Well, it depends on where you go, though, I think.
[42:19.820 --> 42:20.340]  Yeah.
[42:22.280 --> 42:29.400]  Storing gold is definitely a painful and dangerous thing when it comes into the 30-pound or 40-pound bars, whatever they weigh.
[42:29.400 --> 42:29.860]  Yeah.
[42:29.860 --> 42:30.640]  Close it up, guys.
[42:31.600 --> 42:31.860]  Okay.
[42:31.960 --> 42:32.500]  We need to stop.
[42:32.780 --> 42:33.140]  Yeah.
[42:34.860 --> 42:35.100]  All right.
[42:35.900 --> 42:37.180]  Cheshire is going to take back over.
[42:38.460 --> 42:41.100]  We're going to take back over to close it up.
[42:41.320 --> 42:42.340]  Thank you all for coming.
[42:42.520 --> 42:47.180]  If you have questions, Venkat and Jim and I will be out in the corridor.
[42:47.740 --> 42:51.960]  We can be cornered and we can take questions out there.
[42:52.380 --> 42:53.600]  But thank you for coming to the session.
[42:53.840 --> 42:54.140]  I won't notice your hands if you're behind the floor.
[42:54.140 --> 42:54.160]  You'll see these juxtie guys.
[42:54.160 --> 42:54.360]  Now, go ahead.
[42:54.360 --> 42:54.480]  Here, you'll see your hands on.
[42:54.480 --> 42:54.560]  That's a favourite zoom.