Looks like the chaps behind E-Gold are in a spot of bother:
“Three owners of online payment processor E-Gold and an affiliated company have been indicted for money laundering and related crimes for allegedly allowing sellers of child pornography, operators of investment scams and other types of criminals to send and receive payments related to their misdeeds.”
I think I had an E-Gold account briefly either in the late 90s or early 2000ish, never used it, always thought it was a bit dodgy, and just as well I never used it.
Having said that I’m not opposed to alternative forms of paying online, just that the promises of it all being “backed by gold” always sounded like a scam to me, and the transaction fees for converting E-Gold to cash make the exhorbitant currency interchange and transaction fees PayPal charge look like a walk in the park.
I, too, once had an e-gold account but never really used it. The fees were excessive and it was very hard to fund the account. But most online payment processors are difficult to deal with these days. Even PayPal, arguably the most popular online payment processor, can freeze funds without notice and skirts around regulatory control.