DGC Wiki - New Pages

ECUmoney

ePanama — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 09:05:38 CST

TitleServer

dijkstragora — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 07:15:34 CST

Title Server issues certificate to certify that pseudonym P1 holds token T, which means P1 is entitled to certain rights, service or product.
When P1 transfers T token to P2, the title verifies the authenticity of the transfer document and issues the new certificate in favor of P2.

This will be the very basic essential element behind modern electronic markets and community currencies. Community (non-bank created) currencies are the key to heal the world, and survive the "financial crisis" and recession, which is not a natural phenomena (but planned, and man-made).

Technology allows the public all-time audit of issued tokens. When the technology becomes widely deployed, anyone sane will refuse tokens (company shares, bonds, or money) issued in the non-transparent method that encourages fraud.

Implementation:
Title Server should live on a tamper-free hosting hardware behind (or inside, eg USB "key" or PCI card) a webserver.
We recommend that no OS (especially webserver!) is running on the Title Server.
Title Server needs some (preferrably redundant) storage: flash or harddrive. Dedicated tamper-free database is also possible, but the storage primitive is so simple (retrieving an integer number from an array, and incrementing it) that it really should not be necessary.

We recommend implementing the title server inside the GRUB bootloader (or PXE bootloader). GRUB provides

network packet handling (bootp, dhcp, tftp), UDP is suitable
serial port access
storage: block device access, even several filesystems (like ext2, minix, fat, htfs...)

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/General-usage-of-network-support.html

Pseudocode:
In this scenario, P1 transfers a single token to P2.
P1 provides

proof document that P1 is entitled to token (signed by the title server earlier)
and transfer document (signed by S1, secret pair of P1)

The title server

verifies the proof document

tokens exist: denomination, and serial number is inside the issued range. The title server might have this information cached, or it might require this (signed by the token issuer), or retrieve himself
proof document signature is correctly signed (signed by the title server earlier)
the token sequence number is same as stored in the title server: not old (transfer replay attack)

sequence number ++ (also stores the sequence number internally. This basically invalidates the old "P1 is entitled to token" proof document )
signs new proof document in favor of P2
stores the documents in redundant storage (not necessarily in the temper-proof storage)

Note that ONLY the sequence number must be stored in the local tamper-free storage in the title server, that is appr 4 bytes for each token. All other documents cannot be tampered anyway. so they might be stored on lower security webservers over the network, although redundance is required to prevent data-loss.

In this scenario P1 wants to transfer 5 units to P2, but he has tokens: 4+2

P1 provides one proof document for each token
at the end of the transaction P1 will be entitled a change of 1 (and P2 will be entitled 5 of course). The title server maintains a small pool of "change".
one new proof document for each token that parts in the transaction

See Agora

Liberty Reserve

ePanama — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 18:23:53 CST

Web Site Information Updated as of November 2008

Headquartered in sunny Escazu county of Costa Rica, Liberty Reserve S.A. would like to welcome everyone to the future of electronic currency industry. In 2008 we have finally finished our expansion and transition to a state of the art, highly secure building, which allows our employees to provide even better service for you. We have worked very hard to complete this transition with no interruptions to our service.

Corporate History (2006 to present)

Liberty Reserve was acquired by Amed Mekovar in May of 2006. It was acquired as a result of a long research of digital currency industry, the problems and limitations this industry has faced in many jurisdictions, and with all unexplored potential in mind. Why Liberty Reserve? Because the system was designed exceptionally well, it had a great future and idea behind it – but it did not move anywhere. He has been approaching past Liberty Reserve owners since July of 2005, and in May of 2006 he has successfully negotiated an acquisition of Liberty Reserve.

As you may see, in the two and a half years of our ownership of Liberty Reserve, we have turned it into one of the leading payment systems with stellar reputation, millions of happy customers, and a delicate balance of privacy and local law compliance that this industry has not seen before. With over 4,000 new users per day, and about 32,000 transactions settled daily, over 30,000 support tickets answered monthly, 21 on site employees in Costa Rica and 11 employees abroad, with traffic rank surpassing many banks you can imagine what effort everyone has to put into creating this fast growing, smoothly running efficient system.

People behind Liberty Reserve S.A.

Amed Mekovar — Corporate Director
An economist with twelve years of experience in banking industry. Served as a financial consultant to one of the leading banks in Costa Rica. Performed extensive research of financial structures worldwide. Has closely followed digital currency industry to study all possible ways to integrate real banking structure into on-line currency world.

Eric Paltz — Business Development
Has worked for Scotiabank for nine years. Worked his way from assistant manager to investigator in IFU (International Fraud Unit). Extensive experience with fraud cases around the world allows him to maintain Liberty Reserve S.A. a safe and sound place for your on-line banking experience.

Natalia Alfaro — General Manager
Was one of the managers of the largest call centers in Costa Rica. Superb management and office organizational skills keep our employees happy and our clients satisfied.

Paola Santroso — Compliance Officer
Assures that company is compliant with all applicable licenses and is responsible for verification procedure for corporate clients.

Sophia Yassine — Public Relations Is responsible for all press releases to be scheduled monthly starting January 2009. She is also responsible for public image of Liberty Reserve S.A. here in Costa Rica and abroad.

Sandro Castro — Abuse and Business Department inquiries Is responsible for handling all abuse inquiries and most tickets submitted to business department. There are currently fifteen customer support agents for live chat and support tickets.

Location

Headquarters Address	Mailing address	Legal Counsel and Inquiries
Torre Fuentes del Obelisco 2do Piso, Codigo postal 1265 Escazu, Costa Rica, Central America (please no customer support mail at this address, as headquarters are not equipped with mail sorting facility)	Liberty Reserve S.A. 1849-4050 Alajuela, Costa Rica, Central America (mail sorting facility for customer support mail)	Arias&Munoz Centro Empresarial Forum, Edificio C, Oficina 1C1. Santa Ana, San Jose Costa Rica, Central America

Financial Information Liberty Reserve S.A. Registration number: 3-101-446858
Liberty reserve S.A. Tax registration number: 40631001754416

Who created Libertyreserve.com and what year did it start? URL -----> http://web.archive.org/web/20030416025128/planetgold.com/interview.asp?SPID=08248138

Interview with Liberty Reserve
Monday, May 20, 2002

Interview with Arthur Budovsky of Liberty Reserve, conducted by Ragnar Danneskjold, editor - Planetgold.com. E-mail Ragnar for questions or to suggest an interview at Ragnar@planetgold.com.
planetgold: Today, Planetgold is pleased to interview Arthur Budovsky, of Liberty Reserve. ...
Arthur: Since we're based in the Caribbean (Nevis to be exact), we have not to date, nor do we anticipate any sort of problems of that type. We do respect our clients' privacy and only a subpoena served in Nevis would prompt us to consider providing anyone's personal information to a third party. However, since we're not a bank, we don't collect much in the way of personal information anyway. Because we're based in Nevis, you have to be a murderer, kidnapper, or drug kingpin for us to be forced to divulge any sensitive information. Of course, if you ARE such a person, we do not want you as a client, and we would be only too happy to cooperate with authorities in situations like that. As far as client privacy, all our files and communications with clients are encrypted and stored on offshore servers. All online transactions are conducted through a secured socket layer protocol (SSL). We have taken other steps, but they are proprietary in nature.

Arthur Budovsky and Vladimir Kats (Arthur Budovsky of Liberty Reserve, conducted by Ragnar Danneskjold)

Ragnar Danneskjöld is a fictional pirate character from Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Characters_in_Atlas_Shrugged

Ragnar AKA Vladimir Kats. Who is Arthur Budovsky? (see interview ---->)
Arthur and 'Ragnar' were also one of the the operators of GoldAge.net arrested in New York on July 2006.

On July 27th, 2006 the New York County District Attorney's office announced the indictment of two alleged principals of Gold Age in Brooklyn, New York (for allegedly violating Article 13-B of New York State Banking Law) after a six month sting operation that began in January 2006. The two defendants, Arthur Budovsky and Vladimir Kats are currently represented by attorney Igor Niman.
Article 13-B of the New York banking law states that it is a felony to transfer money without a license if one knowingly transmits $250,000 or more in a year from a single client in a year; $25,000 or more in 30 days; and $10,000 or more in a single transition. *http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Age

DISTRICT ATTORNEY - NEW YORK COUNTY News Release
July 27, 2006 Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau announced today the indictment of two people on charges of operating an illegal money transmittal business. Eight subsidiary businesses operated by the defendants have also been indicted. The defendants are ARTHUR BUDOVSKY and VLADIMIR KATS. The defendants’ illegal money transmittal business is GOLDAGE INC. Also indicted today are other companies operated by BUDOVSKY and KATS: GOLDAGE HOLDING INC., ECSN INC., EXECUTIVE COMMERCIAL SERVICES INC., INTERNETWORK MANAGEMENT INC., GGN INC., B TO B MARKETPLACE INC. and MGA INTERNATIONAL INC. The defendants operated out of their Brooklyn apartments.

In March of 2004, their web site showed this Brooklyn address which is a Post Office Box.

2106 Bath Avenue, Suite #101
Brooklyn, NY 11214 USA
Phone 718-288-3300

2106 Bath Ave, Brooklyn, NY, 11214 as pictured here.

In April of 2004, the 'About Us' page of the same web claimed they were a Nevada Corporation.

In February 2005 the Liberty Reserve Account User Agreement held the 'Jurisdiction' as Nevis.
8. Jurisdiction This Account Agreement will be governed by the laws of Nevis as such laws are applied to
agreements entered into and to be performed entirely within Nevis by Nevis residents. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------>

In January of 2007, an updated web site showed Liberty Reserve to be operating from Panama.

Liberty Reserve is incorporated under the laws of Panama, with offices worldwide, including New York, Germany, and France.
<------Screenshot of the 'About Us' page.

From the same time January 2007 we find that no company or mailing address can be found on the web site.

The contact information has been trimmed down to just a contact form and a phone number.
The number (917 331-9604) appears to have a New York City area (see below)

A quick Google search turns up the web site AboutUs.com showing this same phone for Liberty Reserve and but a different address in Rockaway Park, NY

The contact is:

James Bell
+1 917-690-8126
PO Box 940538
Rockaway Park NY 11694 US

CNAM entries, Reverse Phone search Area Code :917
Exchange : 690
City : NWYRCYZN01
State : NY

NY - NEW YORK (NWYRCYZN01)NY - NEW YORK (NWYRCYZN01)646-459-8436 dial up local assess number

http://www.aboutus.org/LibertyReserve.com

James Bell, as it turns out was the name used in connection to the original purchase of www.gold-age.net back in April 22, 2002 as evidenced from this interview.

The sale and re-birth of Gold-Age

Monday, April 22, 2002 Interview with Gold-Age.com new CEO, James Bell, and former CEO, Parker Bradley, conducted by Ragnar Danneskjold, editor - Planetgold.com.
planetgold: Today, Planetgold is pleased to interview James Bell, of Gold-Age (www.Gold-Age.net)
planetgold: The three of us are sitting here, in Albany. This is a closing for the sale of Gold-Age. Welcome, James and Parker. Thank you for agreeing to be interviewed.
James: It's my pleasure!
Parker: Same here.
planetgold: So what's the deal here with Gold-Age?
James: I am acquiring Gold-Age from Parker Bradley. Thank you for bringing us together and brokering the arrangement, Ragnar.

The AboutUs.com wiki also contains the same Liberty Reserve/Gold-Age.net contact number for Asianagold ( http://www.asianagold.com/ )
Anthony Hawkins +1 917 690 8126

http://www.aboutus.org/AsianAGold.com
Asianagold.com is another "digital currency exchange for e-gold, Pecunix, Liberty Reserve, e-Bullion, 1mdc, and WebMoney. It is possible to transfer digital gold currency through this service."

By October of 2007, the web site indicated that business was being operated from or was now domiciled in Costa Rica as Liberty Reserve SA.

Screenshot from 10/07 ---------->

In July 2007 another interview was published with Mr. Joul Lee the ‘Marketing Manager’ for Liberty Reserve Digital Currency
by Mark on July 22nd, 2007

Today I am interviewing Mr. Joul Lee the ‘Marketing Manager’ for Liberty Reserve Digital Currency. Liberty Reserve is a 100% irrevocable payment system and digital currency. Liberty Reserve customer funds are protected by an offshore Trust, and at all times accounts are 100% backed by U.S. dollars for LR-USD accounts and gold bullion for LR-gold accounts and Euros for LR-Euro accounts. Customer privacy, security and absolute confidentiality are top priorities for the management and staff at Liberty Reserve. Incorporated in Costa Rica this organization is also a long time member of the Global Digital Currencies Association.
(Q) How long has has Liberty Reserve been in operation? Liberty Reserve (LR) started as a private currency exchange system for import/export businesses that was later open to the pubic as it became more popular. It is functioning publicly since 2001.

http://www.digitalmoneyworld.com/liberty-reserve-interview-with-mr-joul-lee-pt1/ http://www.digitalmoneyworld.com/liberty-reserve-interview-with-mr-joul-lee-pt2/

In October of 2007 there was another interview published.

Interview with Eric Paltz, founder of LibertyReserve

Friday, October 26, 2007 Posted by Adrian Paul

Below you will find Our questions and the accompanying answers by the LibertyReserve Founder:

Q. Hello will you pleace introduce yourself?
A. My name is Eric Paltz, and I am in charge of business planning and development (at LibertyReserve).

http://protectgold.blogspot.com/2007/10/interview-with-eric-paltz-founder-of.html

Other DGC companies directly linked to the owner/operators of Liberty Reserve include:

LibertyImpact newsletter operated by Vlad aka Ragnar, directly linked to GoldAge and LibertyReserve by the 2106 Bath Avenue mailing address and @goldage.net emails

GoldAge from as far back as Feb 2003 was also showing the Bath Avenue address.

Here is the current Alexa summary on GoldAge.net showing again,
Vlad aka Ragnar and the Bath Avenue Address.

As far back as August 2005 the Cambist.net web site also showed the 2106 Bath Avenue Address in Brooklyn.

In the press release from the Manhattan District Attorney's office, July 27th, 2006 regarding the arrests of the GoldAge operators, http://manhattanda.org/whatsnew/press/2006-07-27.shtml

DISTRICT ATTORNEY - NEW YORK COUNTY News Release
July 27, 2006 Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau announced today the indictment of two people on charges of operating an illegal money transmittal business. Eight subsidiary businesses operated by the defendants have also been indicted. The defendants are ARTHUR BUDOVSKY and VLADIMIR KATS. The defendants’ illegal money transmittal business is GOLDAGE INC. Also indicted today are other companies operated by BUDOVSKY and KATS: GOLDAGE HOLDING INC., ECSN INC., EXECUTIVE COMMERCIAL SERVICES INC., INTERNETWORK MANAGEMENT INC., GGN INC., B TO B MARKETPLACE INC. and MGA INTERNATIONAL INC. The defendants operated out of their Brooklyn apartments.
Both defendants addresses were listed:

Arthur Budovsky:
DOB: 10/24/1973
Address: 118 Battery Avenue, Suite 4B,
Brooklyn, New York 11209

Vladimir Kats:
DOB: 01/04/1972
Address: 40 Oceana Drive West, Unit 4B
Brooklyn, NY 11235

If you plug ALL of these above mentioned addresses into any Map software on the Internet, you find they are all just a few miles apart.

(A) 7400 Shore Front Pkwy Arverne, NY 11693 --FastGold, B to B Marketplace

(B) 2106 Bath Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11214--GoldAge, LibertyReserve, GDCAonline.org, Cambist, Asianagold

(C) Vladimir Kats home apt. address: 40 Oceana Drive West, Unit 4B, Brooklyn, NY 11235

(C) Arthur Budovsky home apt. address: 118 Battery Avenue, Suite 4B, Brooklyn, New York 11209

These two shots came from a finance.e-gold forum January of 2005. Message 42 and 55,
http://osdir.com/ml/finance.e-gold.user/2005-01/msg00042.html
http://osdir.com/ml/finance.e-gold.user/2005-01/msg00055.html

(J Murray Wrote)
I recently contacted John Kyle of cambist.net in order to purchase e-gold. I received an email from John with instructions to make the payment out to "B-To-B MarketPlace Inc." and mail to:

B-to-B MarketPlace Inc
7400 Shore Front Pkwy #2E
Arverne, NY 11692

I mailed the money order USPS Prioirty Mail on 12/30/05 and it arrived on 1/3/05. Since then I have left voice messages and emailed John Kyle with no response. Has anyone here had dealings with cambist.net or B-To-B MarketPlace Inc?

(Ragnar Wrote in response)
So, how much are you paying to buy $22.00 worth of e-gold that you want a dedicated team of professionals waiting on you hand and foot?
=====
Regards,
Ragnar
Gold Age - http://www.goldage.net
GDCA - http://www.gdcaonline.org
Shop anywhere with e-gold - http://www.goldstores.com
Liberty Impact - http://www.libertyimpact.com

The GDCA, Global Digital Currency Association.

This was the opening line from the GDCA web site, August 2004. The same text still appears on their web page today.

"You are online right now! You buy, you sell, but who do you trust? You would like to sell globally, but your contacts are all local. The world is full of great customers and great merchants, but it has plenty of bandits and thieves." http://www.gdcaonline.org

2106 Bath Avenue, Suite #101
Brooklyn, NY 11214 USA
This address appears on the GDCA Web from it's start in 2002. Here are 2003, 2004, 2005 screen shots.
<--2003 <--2004 <--2005

NonFraudMoneyMechanics

dijkstragora — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 18:52:22 CDT

Title is a pun on "Modern Money Mechanics", which describes the fraudulent creation of the money supply (by private banks) as a debt that cannot be paid off.

Please save this and the Agora page for bad times (depression, unemployment, credit bubble crash, war or deflation) and show it to your community's computer technician so trade can continue when the bankster's money supply shrinks or dwells.

To transfer to p2,p1 signes a transfer document like:
----
recipient: p2
currency type: fishermanX
transfer value: 5
coin1: 4_1234_31
coin2: 4_1357_22
comment: thanks for all the fish
---- signed by s1

Where s1 is the secret pair of p1.p1 has two coins, with denomination 4. But p1 wants to transfer 5 units, so he will get back some change (3 units) from Titus (the title server). 1234 and 1357 are the serialnumbers for the coins (these allow audit of the total issued amount). The issuer advertises the valid range. Any coin with serialnumber outside the valid range for the given currency and denomination is simply invalid, exactly like a $17 federal reserve note.
31 and 22 is the sequencenumber, 1 right when the coin is issued, and incremented after each transfer.
4_1234_31 becomes 4_1234_32 (same coin, just new owner). It's that simple.

p1 has to attach the proof that he owns 4_1234_31 and 4_1357_22 (these are signed by Titus during an earlier transfer). This way Titus does not need to store history of each coin. Titus only need to store the actual sequence number of each coin. And, of course, Titus must be able to verify his own signature.

To summarize to the whole situation before and after the transaction:

BEFORE:

p1 owns: (total value 8)
4_1234_31
4_1357_22

p2 owns: (total value 0)

Titus owns: (total value 4)
2_5730_43
1_7896_234
1_0013_604

AFTER:

p1 owns: (total value 3)
2_5730_44
1_0013_605

p2 owns: (total value 5)
4_1234_32
1_7896_235

Titus owns: (total value 4)
4_1357_23
----
Titus is the title server, empowered by the currency issuer to sign coins over to the new owner and track sequence numbers, to prevent doublespending. Titus has a small pool so it can manage change during transfers.
As you see, the 4_1234_31 was transferred to p2 (as 4_1234_32, since sequence number incremented).
4_1357_22 went to Titus, but Titus sent 1 to p2 and 3 back to p1 as "change".

Since keys are pseudonymous, public keys don't mean much to Titus.
Anyone can create pseudonym keypairs easily. It's like a modern, do-it-yourself Swiss bank account.

The keys will be allowed to be compound, in a flexible way. Like authorization rule="2 keys from a keyring of 3 is needed to authorize a transaction". This way secure and reliable purse can be implemented using 3 not fully trusted or not completely reliable parties (useful when physically protected purse server is not feasible, so JAVA applet is used, connecting to semi-trusted providers).

The coin is a contractual obligation.
Normally non-inflationary money: redeem in goods / services of the issuer.
But the contract can guarantee it to be redeemable in EUR, GBP, whatever (to make transition easy for people used to fraud-money).
It can be a combination, of course.
It can specify yield curve: value(time). Different yield can be specified if redeemed in goods/services of the issuer than if redeemed in EUR.
No redemption cost if redeemed in goods/services of the issuer, but small cost if redeemed in EUR (because of banking cost).
Contract can specify transfer cost, 1..1000 ppm (as a comparison, debit card payments cost 25000 ppm and paypal costs 40000ppm or 70000 ppm if exchange is involved). Transfer cost is considered at redemption time: the sequence number is considered with a linear (non-exponential) decay. Transfer cost = 1 ppm recommended. It is not ment as a revenue (for the issuer), but against DOS attacks. Perhaps 10..100ppm is reasonable for very small denominations (which is more affordable for a DOS attack).

The currency issue, transfer and public audit is simple.
Because most currencies will be accepted by a limited number of parties (mostly the business partners of the issuers, some wholesales and speculators), valued at a limited number of markets, the interoperation between markets will be the key of global convertibility.
This is not simple, but ripple tries to solve a more complex problem (with some success).

Agora

dijkstragora — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 11:14:13 CDT

About

Bankers succeeded to create an amazing amount of confusion around the very basics of money (look at the ripple discussion forum), even though the basics are simple when one understands that we are dealing with 2 separate issues, both of which have been solved earlier (thousands of years ago!) they just lacked the technology to make it work across the globe without counterfeit - we have the technology today. A system might

just try to offer non-fraudulent money creation, like LETS systems.
also try to offer proper denominations, like the "average consumption basket of an urban consumer". Some LETS systems almost achieve this (those that nominate in hours)
or the system also tries to fine-tune trust
the system might also allow public audit

In my opinion, ripple is the best implementation we have so far. Many thanks to Ryan for all the effort. Transparent ripple could link LETS systems nominating in hours (or link small electronic markets!), and offer a global solution now. Transparent means that the edges (obligations) are open, known to all parties.
Obscure ripple linking small accounts has a fundamental conceptual flaw: for the network to scale, one needs several graph connections. But this increases risk that you are financing a black hole that has debts to all directions. People will choose a better solution, where the total amount of obligations is auditable. This can be solved easily: everyone issues his own currency, in form of tokens, with serial numbers verifyable within the published issued range. Value can be either linked to fraud currency (like EUR) or non-inflationary ("money velocity-independent") realworld units (eg. the services of the issuer) or both. Look at the curves: http://www.falura.hu/en/
Everyone, of course, can decide which currencies he'd respect, in function of the issued amount (important: in obscure ripple one cannot decide to accept X's obligations only if X's total obligations < certain value).
Ripple is still important: in this scenario, something very similar to ripple can be used to link markets.

While LETS systems do not allow fine-tuning trust (it says "trust the community as a whole", which often works good in small, scale automatically adds freeriding costs). Ripple tries to offer "fine-tuning trust", but without public audit, fine-tuning trust is an illusion.

A concept for currency issue and transfer, with public audit capabilities. With automated market solution to make it convertible and convenient.
Hopefully we manage to design related APIs and a reference implementation.

The transfer of tokens is very simple: whoever bears a TitleServer signature has the token. Transfer: happens with digital signature:
P1 (previous owner) signs (with S1 secret key) that he transfers token(seq+1) to P2
The title server (operated or trusted by the issuer) verifies that token(seq) belonged to P1, verifies the validity of S1 signature, and signs a certificate declaring that token(seq+1) belongs to P2.

Note that a sequence number (seq and seq+1 in the example) prevents replay attack, and minimizes the storage requirements in the tamper-proof “title server”. Accounts are essentially keypairs, or a set of keypairs (compound key), can be generated with near zero cost.

In other words, the TitleServer signature entitles the pseudonym to demand the product/service/payment specified in the contract of the given coin. (a coin is an obligation, enforcable in court). Therefore the Title server is the key for tracking coins of a currency (in other words: prevent doublespending) without knowing the coin holder identity.

History

Loom allows issuing currency, but not in an auditable way.
A market implementation similar to Ripple can be used to find path in a graph to convert between any 2 currency.

The concept will be fetched from http://www.falura.hu/en/
See http://groups.google.com/group/rippleusers/topics?hl=en&start=
especially "ultimate market currency" thread

In The News

Just started to port the concept here

Understanding ...

Title server is a dedicated HW with a simple interfacebehind the webserver. It has no apache, possibly not even an OS. Look at syslinux and pxe bootloader, a good base (minimalistic system with networking) to build the crypto services upon.
The redundant datastores of historical transactions are online (ordinary webservers) but they cannot lie (if they try any corruption, it's equivalent to dataloss which is no problem).

Features

The payment transactoins are very simple, and straightforward: look at NonFraudMoneyMechanics
The interoperation of markets is more complex, in many ways resembles ripply. Possibly simpler than ripple, because the unit of measure can be any well-known currency, possibly gold (even if gold does not back these currencies, nor transferred, only used as a "common denominator" to compare other currency values to when routing between markets).

E-commerce Integration

With an USB key used for signing it's all simple. With your own signing-HW "online" (dedicated HW behind firewall just like a title-server) it's also easy. What if you need to hire "signature provider", which is damn cheap, but you don't know which one to trust ? You contract 3 providers that have no way to get to know each other, and define in the system that 2 signatures are needed for authorization.
You drop into a netcafe (with keylogger spyware badware msware), start the JAVA purse applet, type the OTP (one-time passphare, different sequence for small transactions and different for big transactions), you decide to make a transfer.
The applet connects to 3 purseservers to sign the transaction for the currency (Title-)server.
Neither of the purseservers can authorize anything alone. At least 2 needed to authorize. My problem is how to split or blind the message and contact 3 servers (gnunet is too slow, maybe tor is fast enough) so they cannot correlate each other even if owned by same company.
Maybe one server signs the md5 hash, the other sha, the third a thrid kind of hash of the same message.
Just an idea ...more innovative blinding might be more suitable.

Criticisms

Also See

Loom
Ripple
NonFraudMoneyMechanics

External Links

The video submitted (respecting the 30 second limit) to the http://www.project10tothe100.com/ about community currencies http://www.youtube.com/v/RqlIiFfOekk

TextsToSubmit

Yellow Pages

Ripple

ePanama — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 07:49:09 CDT

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Loom

ePanama — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 15:18:37 CDT

About

History

In The News

Understanding Loom Software

Features

E-commerce Integration

Criticisms

Also See

External Links

Yellow Pages

External Links

Wells Fargo

ePanama — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 09:59:03 CST

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Bank of America (BoA)

ePanama — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 09:49:14 CST

Agents Accepting Funds Through BoA

Nigeria

ePanama — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 18:26:38 CST

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

China

ePanama — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 18:24:18 CST

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Philippines

ePanama — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 16:54:15 CST

Pinoy Gold Exchange	http://www.pinoygoldexchange.net/index.php

Indonesia

ePanama — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 18:49:05 CST

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Malaysia

ePanama — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 18:48:49 CST

There is no abstract available for this page revision.

Exchange Agents

ePanama — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 10:05:51 CST

Exchange providers or agents handle exchanges between fiat money and digital currency for the public.

ABC-Gold
AllBusiness Gold
BetterXchangers
Capital Collect Services, LLC
DebitCardExchange
Denver Gold Exchange
EbuyGold (EBG)
e-GoldXpress, Inc.
ePAYNIGERIA
evoGATES
Gold Mediator
Goldert.com
GoldKOBO Services Ltd
IneCash Services
PaysGold Interexchange Service
Pinoy Gold Exchange
Sentraegold
uBuyWeRush, Inc.
VBS Exchange
Vertoro
Webb Exchange Partners LLC

Digital Gold Currency Standards Consortium

Gragnak — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 21:43:32 CDT

The Digital Gold Currency Standards Consortium (DGCSC) is established to develop interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, recommended practices etc.) to guide DGC's to their full potential as viable currencies for all online commerce and payments.

Current Points of Interest

Gold Exchange Rates - In order to help standardise the gold prices used in the Gold Economy, DGCSC provides the price of grams of gold (GAU) in various national currencies on this web site. The rates are also available for download in XML format.

Gold rates are supplied by Kitco.

XML-X - is a new XML-based protocol to facilitate payments and other requests with web-based accounting systems. The mission of the XML-X project is "to create a protocol for spend interfaces and front-end/back-end interfaces that can be the standard for all web based accounting systems". A subset of XML-X has already been implemented by one of the leading GBIC's (Gold Based Internet Currency) and others have shown an interest.

Gold Price

Calculator

Archive

Mail Lists

Crowne Gold

ePanama — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:36:22 CDT

About

Crowne Gold is an online gold and silver bullion dealer. Clients use Crowne Gold to leverage the power & security of gold-backed e-commerce.
Crowne Gold’s software program is a fast, accurate and inexpensive up to the minute gateway to precious metals bullion ownership. The convenience of the Internet provides 24/7 online access to Crowne metal accounts, account history and offers the ability to accept online merchant payments through a non banking platform. For merchants, Crowne Gold is an instant & irreversible, 24/7, low cost, incoming customer payment made from anywhere in the world.
Crowne Gold provides a convenient option to purchase and hold gold while still maintaining the ease of liquidity and fast access to cash. A customer’s gold or silver balance may be transferred online to another Crowne Gold user.
Internet accounts provide customers advanced online accounting features created for convenient online management of precious metal holdings. Verified customers have the ability to buy, sell, store or take delivery of their gold or silver bullion purchases.
Crowne Gold customer may at any time sell gold bullion based on current market prices and receive the proceeds by check, bank wire or have the funds transferred to a Crowne Gold ATM card. ATM cards provide account holders with instant cash access to gold sale proceeds almost anywhere in the world. Crowne Gold is a premier gold and silver dealer for those clients seeking the economic security of precious metals along with the convenience of online banking.
Crowne Gold offers high-quality pure gold and silver medallions, bars, and digitized gold which can be used as Internet payment platform. Crowne Gold is the largest affiliate of the Crown Mint which was established in 1982. The Crown Mint has produced in excess of two hundred silver and gold production dies over the past two decades. These quality dies produce proof, and proof-like, medallions along with other high quality precious metal bullion products. Gold and silver positions contained within the Crowne Gold system are held in secure vaults and validated by external auditors as to their physical existence and are certified free of commercial liens of any kind.

History

Understanding Crowne Gold

Crowne Gold clients may buy & sell gold or silver based on market prices at any time 24/7. Account holders can then take physical delivery of their precious metals purchase in quantities as small as one Troy ounce. The account values of customer gold and silver positions held on deposit are accurately reflected each day in the customer’s on-line statement. Current account statements are re-valued automatically based on world spot prices. The price feeds are always available from the Crowne Gold web site and shown within the account admin areas for easy conversion.

Insecurity associated with government issued currencies coupled with extensive credit card fraud has fostered a massive interest in the use of digital gold as a consumer and merchant Internet payment system. Please read more about these benefits on our Merchants page. Crowne Gold online account holders may instantly transfer any part of their digital precious metal holdings to anyone, anywhere in the world using Crowne’s fully secure exchange system. Crowne uses state of the art encryption to protect customer accounts.

Features

Crowne Gold online transactions minimize currency exchange risk and can act as a hedge against economic downturns. Gold accounts are denominated by gold weight. All transactions are final and instantly debited or credited with no risk of chargebacks. Crowne Gold is a better way to do business on the Internet.

No transaction fees — costs are paid by the buyer
All transactions settle immediately worldwide and deposits are instantly available for use
The Crowne Gold web site is always open for business 24/7, even on holidays
All payments are final eliminating the possibility of a chargeback
No distinction between a merchant account and a consumer account, all accounts have the merchant features
Instant private secure exchanges
Crowne Gold’s private online system provides an alternative to traditional banking
Full on-line accounting
Expand your market base to non credit card consumers
Transaction costs for online merchants are very low

Crowne Gold offers truly global bullion products with a state of the art online banking style software platform. Stored Crowne Gold and Silver bullion offers financial security from global currency problems. Merchants using Crowne Gold recognize that their payments are independent of exchange rate variations and political manipulation of currency markets.

Immediate & Irrevocable Payments All payments, both retail and merchant payments, are deposited into Crowne Gold accounts in real-time and are immediately available for use. There are no waiting periods, settlement times or withholdings for chargebacks. Consequently, all funds based in Crowne Gold are always 100% liquid. No waiting for checks to clear or transactions to clear in the overnight reconciliation. These features give Crowne Gold a distinct advantage over credit card processing.

Low Fees Crowne account transaction fees are some of the lowest in the industry. For decades, the Credit Card companies have held a tight stranglehold on Internet e-commerce. Until recently, it has been virtually impossible for most online businesses to operate securely and efficiently without having a Credit Card merchant account. The card companies are ill-conceived systems which permit fraud and chargeback’s on a massive scale. Consequently, their fraud write offs are at the expense of the business merchants.

Available to “High-Risk” Merchants Crowne Gold is available to all merchants selling legal goods and services. This includes online gambling, sellers of tangible goods, travel agents, and web-hosting services.

Comprehensive Business Management and Reporting Tools Crowne Gold offers a rock solid e-commerce platform for today’s global merchants. Crowne Gold provides an online banking style full-featured Internet interface which enables clients to monitor in real time every aspect of their online business activities. Account access and merchant tools are available 24 hours per day, seven days a week.

Micro-Payments Generally a micro-payment is a small payment like a few cents or even less than one penny making this size transaction impossible for a standard credit card processor. There are many practical online uses for micro-payments. At Crowne Gold your payments are denominated by weight and any payment can be as small as .001 cent. Micro-payments are allowed and encouraged.Crowne Gold offers convenient and affordable online access to all of the financial tools needed to manage a global online business.

E-commerce Integration

Getting Started Today, its easy! Open an account with Crowne Gold and within minutes you can accept gold exchanges from customers. No special approvals are needed. If you are interested in using the Merchant Interface and integrating your web site with Crowne Gold’s server here are the documents which will help: More Information.

Criticisms

Also See

External Links

e-dinar

ePanama — Sat, 03 Mar 2007 09:23:53 CST

About

History

In The News

Understanding ...

Features

E-commerce Integration

Criticisms

Also See

External Links

Yellow Pages

DGC Wiki - New Pages

ECUmoney

TitleServer

Liberty Reserve

Headquarters Address

Mailing address

Legal Counsel and Inquiries

NY - NEW YORK (NWYRCYZN01)NY - NEW YORK (NWYRCYZN01)646-459-8436 dial up local assess number

In October of 2007 there was another interview published.

Interview with Eric Paltz, founder of LibertyReserve

NonFraudMoneyMechanics

Agora

Ripple

Loom

External Links

Wells Fargo

Bank of America (BoA)

Nigeria

China

Philippines

Indonesia

Malaysia

Exchange Agents

Digital Gold Currency Standards Consortium

Crowne Gold

e-dinar