The Digital Money 2007 Round Up, Part 2 of 2

3rd Runner Up:
Liberty Dollar Sues US Government and Gets Raided

A company based in Evansville, Indiana, Liberty Dollar has been in operation since 1998 with its currency backed by precious metals like gold, silver, platinum and copper. In 2006, The Justice Department prosecutors has determined that using Liberty Dollar as circulating currency is a Federal crime.

Bernard von NotHaus, owner of Liberty Dollar counters by suing the US Government in March seeking a declaratory judgment that circulating Liberty Dollars as a voluntary barter currency is not a federal crime and an injunction barring the Defendants from publicly or privately declaring the Liberty Dollar an illegal currency.

On November 14th 2007, Liberty Dollar’s offices were raided (You can see the FBI search warrant for Liberty Dollar here). Their forum was closed, but from one of our DigitalMoneyWorld readers, this was presented

For approximately six hours they took all the gold, all the silver, all the platinum and almost two tons of Ron Paul Dollars that where just delivered last Friday. They also took all the files, all the computers and froze our bank accounts.

We have no money. We have no products. We have no records to even know what was ordered or what you are owed. We have nothing but the will to push forward and overcome this massive assault on our liberty and our right to have real money as defined by the US Constitution. We should not to be defrauded by the fake government money.

But to make matters worse, all the gold and silver that backs up the paper certificates and digital currency held in the vault at Sunshine Mint has also been confiscated. Even the dies for mint the Gold and Silver Libertys have been taken.
more at link

Bernard follows up with an update on the situation of the raids as well as interesting conversations with the FBI agents who worked undercover at LD recently.

The hearing continues.

2nd Runner Up:
Gold Passes 800 Dollars an Ounce

Gold has breached $800 an ounce this year in November (That’s alot of news in November!), hits 28 year peak. Amidst the current weak dollar and more people pouring into commodities to protect their assets since gold is considered one of the safe haven, we’ll continue to see gold pushing forward whilst the dollar gets even weaker.

So have you decided to keep some gold yet?

*Drum rolls on the winner*

Winner:
e-Gold Indictment (1MDC Closed)

It all started in 2005 when the US government had a warrant and seizure issued the bank accounts of Gold & Silver Reserve Inc, the parent company of e-Gold amounting to about 0.8 million USD to try and put e-Gold out of business. The operation didn’t stop e-Gold from doing business and providing the service to millions of their clients (even till today). Eventually everything snowballed to even massive operations on April 2007, where more assets of e-Gold and G&SR were being seized.

Reputable e-Gold exchangers’ accounts were also blocked; Big names include IceGold, The Bullion Exchange, Gitgold, Denver Gold Exchange, AnyGoldNow, and Gold Pouch Express and as such, knocked some of them out of business. And that effectively brings…

1MDC Closed

I never understand how 1mdc works since everything was based on storing e-Gold in an existing e-Gold account that belongs to 1mdc, but that effectively ends their operations as a digital currency as well. True that you could save up storage fees from e-Gold (but their fees isn’t even hefty and I don’t understand why people would use them). The site now points to nothing and there’s not even a domain name server set at all. Integrity is surely an issue here.

Will e-Gold survive the legal battle against the indictment? As I pointed out previously, the fees involved is huge and as everyone knows and pinpoints that even if the Feds can’t win e-Gold’s team, the prolong legal battle will drain them out.

This piece, in my opinion is the biggest news of the digital money industry in 2007. Wonder what more will come up next year. Hmm.

HAPPY NEW YEAR GUYS :)