2006年01月の記事一覧 | zoo & imitation clones

CITTA' DI TORINO---ビキューナって無関係だけど

　　　　　　　　　　　CITTA' DI TORINOServizio Centrale, Olimpiadi e Promozione della Citta って、ヘッドで少し前に、Turino Olympic City CompetitionのTHE JURY　からエアメールがきた、、、久々の、Dear Sir, で始まる文章、、、、（ハリウッド以来だ）でも、入賞は無いかも、Atrium Citta,Atrium 2006と書かれた書類ケースみたいなもので送られてきたけど、使われてる写真はどうも、スケート会場みたい、当初、協会からの情報としては、スケート会場で展示？とか解釈できたのだけど。どこでするのかは、解らない、、、、、しかし、公式サイト　Associazione Illustratori (WWW,associazioneillustratori.it)には、載る（入って無いからわからないが、、）とのこと、、、名前だけかもしれないが、、、捕らぬタヌキで、賞金は、e-Goldで、って思ってたけど、paypalは解らないが、Stompayからは、口座振替ができなくなり、もし取れたらどうしようの心配も、多分、要らないことでしょう。----------------で、話は変わり。オークションの話、知人のことですが、某ヤフーオークションに、ベビーアルパカ（表題）の毛皮のコートが出ていて、狙っていたのですが、高額になり過ぎて断念、ほぼ同時期に出てた、表題ウサギのコートと書かれたオークションを、画像解析の結果、ベビーアルパカに酷似の為、入札した、が次点、、しかし、落札者削除（引上げ屋の落札）の為、権利がおりてきて、即成約購入、ウサギなら、多少高額になるが、ベビーアルパカなら、超格安値での購入、もしであれば、この手（リャマ系）は、年代を経ても、傷みはほとんど無いものだし、、、でも、ベビーアルパカの毛皮って見たこと無いし、、、どうなんだろう、、、って見せてもらえるチャンスがあったので、軽く見せてもらったら、、、、凄い、ひたすら、凄い、フックのベビーアルパカのインナーのアルパカツイード持ってるけど、毛の細さ、シルキー（光沢）さ、強さ、圧迫感のない弾力性、保温性、なんて比じゃ無い！フックインナーも撚糸して無いものだけど、これほどの違いがあるとは、正直信じられない、当然毛落ちはないし、薄い革で非常に軽いが、フォックスなんかより非常に強い、ホントにアルパカ？って感じ、毛並みについては、セーブル、チンチラが凄いと思ってたが、セーブルが堅く感じるし、チンチラの毛が太く感じられ、ザツにも思える、、、、、、何これって感じ、キャリアが、ここ5年、１０年なら、非常にワシントン条約上、ヤバイ商品では無いかと思われてきた、この感触は、ずーと昔に、触れもしなかった、とある貴族のベッドカバーの形容に似てる当事の価格で、ゆうにン千万はする（ビンテージペルシャ絨毯より高い）かの　　　　　ビキューナ　　　の物では無いか？？？？、毛織りコートで、1千万はする、繊維中で一番高価な、あのビキューナしか考えられない、、、、、、、しかも毛皮当人は、ベビーアルパカ、ウサギって云ってるから、教えないでおこう、幸せの為に、下手すれば、、、、、、、、、、デザイン、造りから、かれこれ、ン十年物の感じだけど、全く新品同様、、昔、見た宮殿のベッドカバーも、１００年はたってたが、見た目下ろしたて、だったからね、、で、黙っておくんだ、ここ見たら、バレるけど、色々交渉してるけど、譲る気ないみたいだし、、ウーほしい。やっパ、獣毛素材は、イイ、毛皮は残酷感はあるかもしれないが、基本的には、ランチ物だし、それは、食に変わるか、衣に変わるかだし、また、刈毛（ウール、安価アルパカ、安価キャメル）なら生えてくるし、落ち毛（カシミヤ、アルパカ、リャマ、キャメル）は基本的に不要品だしね、アクリル、ポリ、なんか着ようものなら、湿疹は出るし、超乾燥するし、フリーツや、ナイロンのダウン着た日には、おまけに静電気をためてしまい、何枚、２万ボルトの直撃や、カードの磁気飛ばしたことやら、仮に、プラダ（スポーツ）のロンTなんかの上に、安いミンク、馬ハラコを着ただけでも、こう云った症状はなくなるのは不思議、エコ、リサイクルなんかで、アクリル樹脂、ポリ系の繊維が再生され、商品とかで安価で流通するけど、最低限、私の身体には、有害なもの、いい加減、言葉で振り回されてほしく無い感じです、やっぱ、高価でも、本当にからだに良い、天然コットン、油抜きして無いバージンウール、シルク、キャメル、カシミヤ、モヘア（アンゴラ山羊）、アルパカ、リャマ、とかを、着ていたいものです、ブランドと同じように。ブランドで思い出しましたが、ほぼ、３５年物の、LVセカンドバッグ、とあるリサイクル屋でゲットしました。５２５円なり！！ニセモノ扱いとして売ってたわけで、なるほど、ロゴは、はいって無いし（内張りメンテの痕跡、山羊革～猪に変更されてる）シリアル刻印はない（81.78～以前）造りが違う、かのアニエール某氏の、縫いが歴然とわかる、当時使用のエテルナジップ、猪革（一見ペッカリー）の引きタブ（濃色）、いわゆる、グリーンカラーのシルクでの印刷(モノグラム）表面エンボスが、現行の８０年代以降の物と、微妙に違う、って所で、本物と判断、まず間違い無いし、無償メンテ受けてますから、モノグラムトアル生地、1ケ所少しキレ（ヌイの構造上、よくあるが、現行の縫いでは起きにくが、他に、、、）、褪色くらいで、温度、湿度で、復活するみこみ、１００年前のLVもすごいが、マーク・ジェイコブス以前もいい、素材の安定感にアグラをかきすぎたデザインの現行物は、いまだ、あまり好きで無いし、以外ともろい気がしてならない。おまけの、ダイエット編コルシカ（？）だったかどっかの、地中海の島の、硬水、contrex(コントレックス）マグネシューム、カルシュウム味がやや強めで、癖があり、最初呑みにくかったが、以外と、美味しく感じられ、ダイエットにも良いとの事で、飲み出したのですが、通常、一日1.5Lの引用だと各サイトで書かれてるが、実際は、よく飲んで、1日700ccくらいで、現在は、精々200ccくらい、、で効果はあるかと云うと、人によるが、よく効く、体重変動は、激しいほうなのだか、これは、短期に、病気かと思うくらい、いろんな、ゼイニク、アブラが落ちた、耳から首筋の年令による？膨らみも、どう云うわけか、おちた、体重差は、ほぼ１２kg、約３ヶ月、実質1ヶ月でほぼ、１０kg落ち、飲む料を抑え、後は、維持的にコップ1杯（200cc位）なんですが、この後の２ヶ月の間に、各部位の出っ張りが、落ちてきた、実質は精々２kgなんですが、新陳代謝の良化のせいでしょうか、サイズが変わってしまた（L～SM）、まだ中年域の前くらいに、まあ維持の為、コップ1杯でつづけますかね。現在がベストだし、これ以上は落としたく無いので、別段、スレンダーやスリムにはなる気は無いので（元々、以前やってた競技骨格体型なので、ムリ）、無理せず、重さを感じないナチュラルなのが一番良いのでは。

E-gold--関連事件記事抜粋と＆etc 　おしまい。

大長文でした-------やや、スキャンダルぽいけど、抜粋、トップってどこも、チャランポランなのかね？この件を知ったのは、かきのかかわりから、、、、、、、、です。e-bayとのかかわりで、paypalでの取り引きしてたのですが、e-beyでの取引では有意義なのだが、他の、forex、autsurfとは取引口座が無く、主とされる口座e-Goldを開いたのですが、入金に煩雑さが有り、また、下記の事件の事件の舞台となったように、？？？？なので、いまは、ステイ状態（各サイト取引停止状態）仮に唯一の流通口座として運営している所は、きのうてきにSCAM(詐欺）サイト化してる、感が拭えないので、現在は,取引先の信頼性から、主に、Stormpayでの、取引に変わってきた、検証機関としてNet IBAの登録（登録料＄19.55、stormpay)とともに,主でやってます、feeが高いのですが、メール認証が有れば、feeが割安になるし、サイト内のペイメールで、1ヶ月通せば、登録料のフォローにかなりなるし、デビッドカード発行の条件的なものなので、口座移行の引下ろしが、どこのATMでも可能なので、極めて便利にできる、AUTSURF,FOREX,の便宜性の高さと信頼性でNET-IBAの登録サイトの信頼度で、12dailyproと、Net-TBA未登録だが,4dailyに、ほぼ最低の、upgradeでの投資で、双方Totalで、ゆうに＄3,000をこえてしまったようです。forex系はこれからですが、Net-IBAの証人サイトで、確実にプログラム通り進行中ですが、まだ小額の投資で、ペイアウトを繰返してますので、大まか名金額をだしてません、INSTANT-CSYNCFUNDS.COM.ここのアフィリエイトですが、基本的にこのサイトからレプの購入者はでない予定で、日記上でかけて、購入否定にかかわらず、掲載しましたら、異常なクリック率、購入率、になってました、そのまま、収益になれば、ヤバイのですが、元のショップが捕まった（警察窓口に、ここでのIDを通報）とで、廃棄、削除とかで1人分160ポイントだけの獲得、他は、なくなり、私の方は、よかったのですが、実際購入者は、数十人近く、闇のなか、、、、ヤフーにでも、いつも通りだしますか、数人に関しては、疑わしい方もいますよ。

E-gold--関連事件記事抜粋と＆etc 　3

Daniel J. Larkin, head of the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, says that in recent years, e-gold has hidden behind "a plausible-deniability fog." Now the fog may be lifting as the subpoenas pile up and federal agents begin to examine what they confiscated in their Dec. 19 raid. The Internal Revenue Service is separately auditing e-gold's parent, and Jackson says e-gold has voluntarily agreed to cooperate with an IRS review of its procedures for preventing money laundering. The IRS declined to comment.TERROR TOOL?Before the recent raid, Jackson said that responding to subpoenas and other government inquiries has been distracting and expensive. Although he emphasized that e-gold isn't obliged to monitor its clientele, he said that he could have paid more attention to vetting account holders were it not for the outside interruptions. He added that he plans to switch from an account-based log-in system to a user-based one to monitor customers more closely.The worst-case scenario, so far undetected by officials, would be the use of e-gold by financiers of terrorism. Experts on terrorism funding note that digital currencies resemble the money-changing system known as hawala, which Middle Eastern terrorists have used. A customer gives money to a hawala service, which then telephones a similar service in another city or country that doles out money to a designated recipient. Many hawala outfits have been shut down since September 11, making digital currencies a logical next step, says Phil Williams, a professor of international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh and consultant to the United Nations on terrorism financing. "At some point, this is going to be used" by terrorists, Williams says.Jackson scoffs at this notion. "We are not bad guys, and the e-gold system simply does not pose an undue risk for usage for terrorist purposes," he wrote in an e-mail on Jan. 20, 2005, to AUSTRAC, Australia's anti-money-laundering regulator, which was looking generally into potential terrorist use of digital currency.But e-gold attorney Fuerst said in early December that the company quickly complied with requests in 2005 from Russian law enforcement and the FBI for records connected to a would-be terrorist in Russia. This person allegedly threatened to "blow something up," Fuerst said, unless a ransom was paid into his e-gold account. The FBI and the Russian Interior Ministry declined to comment.This month's raid could signal serious trouble for e-gold. But cybercrime experts predict that if the company falters, nefarious business will simply transfer to other digital currencies, especially ones based in countries that have lax law enforcement. Amir Orad, executive vice-president of cybersecurity firm Cyota, says that putting e-gold out of business "would not stop anything."

E-gold--関連事件記事抜粋と＆etc 　2

つづき------Mark Jeftovic considers himself a big fan of digital currencies -- but one now skeptical about e-gold. The founder of easyDNS Technologies Inc., an Internet domain name registrar in Toronto, he started accepting e-gold as payment in 2003. Jeftovic believes that digital currencies will minimize the harm of government-induced inflation. But in early 2005, investigators from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police visited easyDNS seeking information about cybercriminals allegedly using the registrar's services. It turned out that some of the suspects had paid Jeftovic's company via e-gold, he says. Angered by the police scrutiny, Jeftovic now plans to offer rival digital currency GoldMoney in addition to e-gold. "I like the digital currency and e-gold economy, and I want to support it," he says. "But you have to run a cleaner shop than this."The RCMP didn't respond to requests for comment. Jackson says he wasn't aware of Jeftovic's concerns or the RCMP investigation. He says that e-gold responds as quickly as possible to inquiries from law enforcement agencies and readily provides them with user names, account numbers, and transaction histories.A number of gold buffs and some law enforcement officials see GoldMoney as a reputable alternative in the digital currency field. Based in the British Channel island of Jersey, GoldMoney is run by James Turk, a precious metals trader and former Chase Manhattan banker. He says that his company requires new customers to mail in copies of identity documents and then checks the data against lists of suspected terrorists and money launderers. The accounting giant Deloitte Touche annually audits its gold holdings and security measures.E-gold's Jackson says those steps are expensive and unnecessary. OmniPay, an affiliate of e-gold, is one of more than a dozen "digital currency exchange agents" that handle the conversion of conventional currency into e-gold. Jackson says that to authenticate users' identities, OmniPay sends them a special code via e-mail and conventional mail. But users aren't required to prove their identity, so it isn't clear what this accomplishes. Jackson says that his lone in-house investigator looks for obvious fraud, such as a customer using "China" as his only address.Some of e-gold's customers have been unsavory. Omar Dhanani used e-gold to launder money for the ShadowCrew, a cybercrime gang with 4,000 members worldwide, according to an October, 2004, affidavit by a Secret Service agent. Based in a stucco house in Fountain Valley, Calif., Dhanani used his PC to hide the money trail from the sale of thousands of stolen identities, bank accounts, and credit-card numbers, the government said. Accomplices sent him Western Union (FDC ) money orders, which, for a fee, he filtered through e-gold accounts. On Oct. 4, 2004, Dhanani, 22, who used the nickname Voleur -- French for thief -- boasted in a chat room that he moved between $40,000 and $100,000 a week. He pled guilty in November to conspiracy to commit fraud and faces up to five years in prison."GOOD FENCES" E-gold's Jackson says the company was never contacted by the Secret Service regarding Dhanani and had no duty to sniff him out. E-gold's outside attorney, Mitchell S. Fuerst, calls statements in the Secret Service affidavit alleging that e-gold was used to facilitate illegal activity "nonsense." Fuerst argues that the responsibility for policing the identity and activities of e-gold account holders lies with the banks and other regulated institutions from which money is transferred into e-gold's system. Jackson goes further, insisting it's impossible to launder money through e-gold -- a contention that law enforcers say is contradicted by the Dhanani case and others.Jackson has made no secret of his desire to avoid U.S. government scrutiny. In 2000, he and his partner Downey registered e-gold Ltd. in Nevis, hoping the maneuver would add another layer of insulation from U.S. regulation. Jackson concedes that e-gold has existed in Nevis only as "a piece of paper." Its parent administers e-gold services from the Melbourne office; the operation's computer servers are in Orlando. Jackson says he chose the tiny island because registration there is inexpensive, and the government follows well-established British commercial law. Nevis is also known for lax financial regulation. Referring to his desire to create legal distance from U.S. officials, Jackson says: "There's an element of good fences make good neighbors."On Dec. 5, two weeks before the federal raid in Melbourne, the Nevis Financial Services Regulation Supervision Dept. posted a notice on its Web site that e-gold had disseminated "misleading information" about its legal status. Nevis officials say that the company was removed from the island's corporate registry in July, 2003, for failure to pay the annual registration fee of $220. Jackson didn't respond to questions about this.Back in the U.S., e-gold has tried to shield itself semantically, avoiding basic banking terms such as "deposit" and "withdrawal" that could increase its risk of being categorized as a regulated financial institution. E-gold calls such transactions "in-exchange" and "out-exchange." Jackson says: "It's not a desire to be tricky. It's a desire to be accurate. It's important not to be misconstrued as a bank."Whatever its legal status, e-gold's usefulness to scam artists was colorfully illustrated by E-Biz Ventures, which allegedly portrayed itself as a Christian-influenced organization that offered investors returns as high as 100%. E-Biz' proprietor, Donald A. English of Midwest City, Okla., allegedly highlighted his reliance on e-gold to appeal to victims' fear of the federal government and their desire for anonymity. E-Biz investors opened e-gold accounts and transferred funds to accounts controlled by English. He shifted e-gold among more than 25,000 accounts, using new investors' money to pay off some older ones. The scam took in $50 million before the SEC shut it down in 2001. Investors lost $8.8 million. Later prosecuted in federal court in Oklahoma City, English pled guilty to wire fraud and last May was sentenced to five years in prison.Jackson says that when subpoenaed by the SEC in the civil part of the E-Biz case, e-gold supplied transaction data. A Jackson aide worked closely with investigators in the civil case. "They responded timely to every request for assistance," says Chris Condren, E-Biz' court-appointed receiver.Evidence of e-gold's suspect following is found on numerous Web sites. A contributor to Cannabis Edge, a site for marijuana growers, has provided advice on how to employ e-gold and two other digital currencies -- WebMoney and NetPay -- to hide illicit proceeds "beyond the reach of U.S. pigs." E-gold in particular "has strong security," is "easy to use, and is anonymous," said the writer, who used the name Bill Shakespeare. (Moscow-based WebMoney and NetPay, which is based in Panama City, Panama, both deny any wrongdoing.)In addition to its abundant offerings of stolen financial data -- with payment frequently sought via e-gold -- the site CC-cards carried a message in November from a hacker using the name HellStorm. He advertised that for a 5% fee, he would set up and fund e-gold accounts for those who are in a hurry to do business and want to shield their identity. Users of CC-cards can make donations for the upkeep of the site by clicking on a link that connects to an e-gold account. (E-mails seeking comment from CC-cards and Cannabis Edge weren't answered.)Jackson says that he wasn't aware that e-gold was being recommended or used on outlaw Web sites until he was so informed by BusinessWeek. The company has since blocked the CC-cards donation account, he says. There is little the company can do about such situations, Jackson contends, unless law enforcement brings them to e-gold's attention. Once informed, "we can set a value limit to prevent an account from receiving further payments," he says. "We can identify if there is a constellation of accounts controlled by the same miscreant." Jackson adds: "If we get an appropriate court order, we can monitor and assist in a sting that freezes value."The danger of Web sites like CC-cards that are fueled in part by e-gold became very apparent to Kimberly S. Troyer. Her identity went up for sale there last September. Among the 22 items CC-cards put on the block: her checking account number at Bank One (JPM ), driver's license number, Social Security number, birth date, and mother's maiden name. The price for all that: $30 of e-gold. Informed of the offer by BusinessWeek in December, Troyer, a 33-year-old accounting student at Davenport College in South Bend, Ind., is changing all of her identity documents. She believes she escaped without losing any money. But someone hijacked her e-Bay account and changed the address to one in China so that it could receive payments from the sale of iPods Troyer didn't own. "It makes me sick to my stomach," she says. Jackson says e-gold can't do much about such cases until he's formally alerted by the government.There is one crime, however, to which Jackson has reacted more aggressively: child pornography. In August, he attended a conference in Alexandria, Va., organized by the National Center for Missing Exploited Children. The center is trying to enlist banks and credit-card companies in a crackdown on payment schemes used by child porn Web sites. "There are fewer and fewer sites with Visa -- and more and more with e-gold," says the center's chief executive, Ernest E. Allen. The center has a policy of not publicly identifying child porn sites it tracks. Jackson says he was appalled to find e-gold on the list of institutions used by the porn sites. He provided the center with instructions on how to seek e-gold records, and the group says it is pleased with e-gold's cooperation.

E-gold--関連事件記事抜粋と＆etc

---------------------------------------------------------------------BUSINESS WEEK ARTICLE...Release date - Jan 9, 2006.E-gold is a "digital currency." Opening an account at www.e-gold.com takes only a few clicks of a mouse. Customers can use a false name if they like because no one checks. With a credit card or wire transfer, a user buys units of e-gold. Those units can then be transferred with a few more clicks to anyone else with an e-gold account. For the recipient, cashing out -- changing e-gold back to regular money -- is just as convenient and often just as anonymous.E-gold appeals to "gold bugs": people who invest in the precious metal and believe money ought to be anchored to it. E-gold boasts that its digital currency is backed by a stash of gold bars stored in London and Dubai. But e-gold also appeals to savvy online crooks who want to move money quickly and without detection. American banks and conventional cash transmitters like Western Union are legally required to monitor customers and report suspicious transactions to the government. E-gold seems to go out of its way to avoid such obligations. Its operations are in Florida, but in 2000, its principals registered the company in the lightly regulated Caribbean haven of Nevis.Law enforcement officials worry that the little-known digital currency industry is becoming the money laundering machine of choice for cybercriminals. On the evening of Dec. 19, agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Secret Service raided the Melbourne (Fla.) office of e-gold's parent company, Gold Silver Reserve Inc., and the nearby home of its founder, Douglas L. Jackson. Agents copied documents and computer files, but so far no charges have been brought. The Secret Service and the FBI declined to comment on the raid. Jackson has denied any wrongdoing, though the raid isn't the first indication that federal investigators view e-gold as a magnet for online misdeeds. The FBI separately is pursuing about a dozen probes in which e-gold appears as a "common denominator," a senior agent says.The potential danger goes beyond e-gold. Investigators say other digital currencies are similarly used for corrupt purposes. All told, there are at least a dozen such services worldwide, based in places like Russia and Panama. Eight of them, including e-gold, claim to be backed by actual bullion. As a group, these firms do billions of dollars a year in transactions, according to Jim Davidson, a spokesman for the Global Digital Currency Assn. in New York. E-gold and its rivals make money by charging small percentage fees on those transactions.Most of the law enforcement interest in e-gold involves alleged fraud and money laundering by its users. A tour of some outlaw corners of the Internet illustrates why. One Web site called CC-cards -- where cyberthieves sell pilfered bank account and credit-card information -- often asks for payment via e-gold. Some sites pushing child pornography have dropped Visa and MasterCard recently in favor of e-gold, according to the National Center for Missing Exploited Children, which tracks underage porn.But U.S. officials have another concern: that e-gold and rival digital currencies could be used to finance terrorism. It's a notion the companies all reject.SUBPOENA CENTRALThe man behinD e-gold, Doug Jackson, is a tall, powerfully built former oncologist. A fan of the gold standard, Jackson, 49, became a pioneer in digital currency when he set out a decade ago to create what he describes as a private gold-based monetary system. He envisioned e-gold as a currency that would be accepted at Wal-Mart (WMT ) while also permitting peasants from China to Peru to offer products at stable prices. "I thought there would be this flock of e-gold users, and I would be their messiah," he says. "It just didn't happen."What did happen, according to law enforcement officials, was that a pack of felons flocked to Jackson's brainchild. Sitting in an undecorated conference room in the Melbourne office three months before the federal raid, he acknowledged that he had a "six-inch pile" of subpoenas from such agencies as the FBI, the Securities Exchange Commission, and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service -- all seeking information about some of his more suspect customers. Investigators say Jackson may have begun his quirky business with innocent intentions. But in recent years he has turned a blind eye, the officials say, to mounting evidence that e-gold has attracted a seamy clientele. The federal raid suggests that agents are intensifying their focus on e-gold and its potential criminal liability.Jackson didn't respond to messages after the raid. But earlier, he denied vehemently that he has looked away from crime. He said he responds as quickly as possible to official inquiries. He acknowledged, though, that his staff of 15 includes only one in-house investigator who struggles to keep up with all those subpoenas. E-gold has about 1.2 million funded accounts through which transactions worth $1.5 billion were conducted in 2005, he says. As for the idea that he should systematically monitor customer identities and money flows, he argues that's not his job: "We don't validate because we're unlike any other system."Federal officials reluctantly confirm this loophole: E-gold and other digital currencies don't neatly fit the definition of financial institutions covered by existing self-monitoring rules established under the Bank Secrecy Act and USA Patriot Act. "It's not like it's regulated by someone else; it's not regulated," says Mark Rasch, senior vice-president of the Internet security firm Solutionary Inc. and former head of the Justice Dept.'s computer crime unit. The Treasury Dept.'s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) is studying ways to close the regulatory gap. Meanwhile, U.S. officials say e-gold and similar companies should voluntarily do more to deter crime.Started in 1996, e-gold was part of an early wave of Internet payment systems that converted conventional money into a Web currency. Most of those pioneers soon flopped, because consumers resisted paying fees to get Web cash. Others, such as PayPal, now a unit of online auction giant eBay Inc. (EBAY ), evolved into credit-card processing services.E-gold and a handful of rivals, including one called GoldMoney, were different. Their founders believed that tying monetary exchange to a strict gold standard would achieve greater economic stability. The Internet provided a ready venue for gold bugs the same way that it offered a soapbox to adherents of every other strain of thought. Jackson, an Army veteran and a graduate of Pennsylvania State University's medical school, was practicing oncology in Melbourne in the mid-1990s when he began reading about libertarianism and monetary theory. The married father of two adopted boys began to change his thinking. He scoured the works of libertarian novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand and was impressed by economist Friedrich A. Hayek's The Road to Serfdom, an influential 1944 condemnation of government control of the economy. "It looked like a lot of the suffering of recent centuries -- some of the scale of wars, some of the economic dislocations -- could be traced back to credit cycles. And credit cycles could be traced back to monetary manipulation" by governments, Jackson says. "I was very moved by it."INTELLECTUAL CONVERSIONGold, he concluded, was the cure. The U.S. stopped tying the dollar to a fixed amount of gold in 1971. But Jackson and a friend, attorney Barry K. Downey, decided to start what amounted to their own gold-backed currency. Jackson liquidated retirement accounts and sold his medical practice to help raise an initial $900,000. A former colleague noticed him working on computer code around the clock at his stand-up doctor's desk. He often forgot to eat and lost weight. Along the way, he stopped attending church. Jackson confirms all this but stresses that he continued to provide excellent care for his patients until he bowed out of medicine completely in 1998.In a series of interviews with Jackson, his statements about e-gold swing from grandiose to resigned. "We want e-gold to be recognized as a privately issued currency and to be treated as a foreign currency" by the U.S. and other governments, he says at one point. But e-gold's offices don't conjure up images of a grand central bank. Jackson, who during one interview wore neatly pressed slacks and a yellow-striped shirt, runs his currency from a Spartan suite on the third floor of a Bank of America (BAC ) building.Online currencies are patronized by software companies and other small businesses. Jackson says that the fees he charges customers -- for converting real money to e-gold, administering accounts, and doing transfers -- generated about $2 million in revenue in 2005 for e-gold's parent company, Gold Silver Reserve, which he also controls. The operation turns a profit, he adds, but he won't say how much (BCO ).