Well, call me crazy...

Hello!

So while I'm sitting here, stomach rumbling, contemplating my 2 for 1 Whopper coupon it occured to me that somehow this has some kind of real currency in it.

Wasn't the root idea for this to have a fee for transferring money of one ecurrency to another? That part I totally understand. I used to travel internationally rather frequently and changing dollars to euros to lyra to sterling to kronos to whatever always has a brokers fee (whether at the airport or hotel). When I would return, I'd head over to the local bank and discovered they will only exchange paper money... no coins no matter the value... and they charged me to change it back too.

Now, it strikes me that there is no shortage of goods being exchanged for money on the internet. Internationally too, I'd bet. PayPal is probably being kept alive from ebay alone. So at the root of all this, there are a LOT of products being purchased by a lot of people... so the need for the ecurrency exchanging makes sense. The question seems to be about the exchanging money between a merchant and another merchant.

Earlier Dave said, "The reason why is because those merchants want to get their money exchanged out for ecurrency so they can do more trading (processing OutX's and claims via the console)"... "So, they are happy to pay you 5% since they will turn around and make 8-12% on that same money depending how they trade it."

Doesn't that mean that a merchant will trade with another merchant in order to maximize the amount of ecurrency they have at their disposal... in order to do the exchange for someone buying their schoolbooks from Copenhagen while living in Cyprus? That makes sense to me... because while the merchant to merchant exchange costs them 5%, the schoolbook exchange gains them 8-12%.

I'm not sold on the idea of identity theft... this is too large of a scale unless I'm as much of an ignoramous as I think I am.

So this comes down to the question of gold... is there gold in them-thar Vanuatu hills?

Aren't there plenty of places that people have anonymous accounts? Zurich and Cayman Islands? I hear that stuff in all the espionage movies, and being the "richard cranium" I am, I figured that was real. So why not Vanuatu?

I looked up Vanuatu gold in google.

The first thing I found of interest was this....

http://www.taxfreegold.co.uk/vanuatu.html

"Brief Vanuatu History
Vanuatu is the new name for the New Hebrides, a group of small islands east of Australia, discovered by Portuguese navigator Pedro de Quiros in 1606, and named New Hebrides in 1774 by Captain James Cook. The islands were much visited for their sandalwood, and rather unusually, the British and French each relinquished their claims to firstly declare the zone as neutral, and later as a joint Anglo-French dominion (condominium). Vanuatu became independent in 1980 and remains a member of the British Commonwealth."

So does this mean that this is a British Island? Yes, it does. Now this is better than some savage island populated by the cast of Survivor, right?

So I searched further. My search was ""vanuatu gold" investing bullion currency". I found this link which is a very detailed adobe acrobat report on this one company that does work in Vanuatu.

http://www.alcaston.com.au/reports/2003-Alcaston-Annual_Report.pdf

Page 7 starts the Vanuatu mines they hold. More on pages that follow.

Now, last thing I found was that Vanuatu has some hot springs discovered in the ocean floor. I confirmed that on another search. This is relevant because it means that the specific island has a very rich mineral content... making it a mining opportunity.

I don't know... I really hope I'm not just a supreme fool. I think its not so scam looking on the surface, and although I'd love for it to be an opportunity (no I haven't signed on to try yet), I am being very cautious. I hope I'm being objective... some small part of me makes me think I'm not.

Sean

> I guessed it's a made-up term for "digital ingot", designed to
> make you believe there is some gold in there somewhere backing up the
> e-currency. A sham, of course. There is no gold, except as coating on some
> wires in the chips that make up the virtual economy.

> Anybody who thinks there's real gold behind any of these e-currencies has
> been reading way too much Harry Potter. If they really had the gold, and
> it was really being used to "back" the e-currency, that claim
> could be verified by an independent, trustworthy third party.

> As the original poster said, the root cause of my suspicion, besides all
> the others, is the fact that there are no real customers of this
> marketplace. If the organizers are running it as a training site, and
> giving out fees for showing skill in processing virtual transactions with
> no basis in real life, you just have to ask WHY?!?!?!

> They have no guarantee that the trainees will stick around to use their
> training to the benefit of the organizers later. Why train folks you have
> no reason to believe will be around? One possibility is that the
> organizers understand they are presenting an addictive experience, and the
> participants will not leave because they get just enough positive
> reinforcement to stay.

> Like rats being given the odd food pellet for pushing the right pedal.

> Or else the "training payments" aren't really costing the
> organizers anything.