Tuesday, December 20, 2011

GoldMoney is No Longer... Money

In yet another example of a business being strangled by regulation, GoldMoney has been forced to remove the ability of its Full Holding customers to send and receive payments in precious metals. In other words, GoldMoney is officially no longer a competitor to Bitcoin.

Unfortunately, Edwin Vieira will have to recommend a different alternative currency (linked to an earlier part of the video for context. "GoldMoney" is mentioned at 49:38).

This email was sent out to GoldMoney customers, today:

Dear Customer,

We are writing to advise you of a change of services we currently offer to our customers with a Full Holding. Since the launch of GoldMoney in 2001, we have continued to change and adapt to the global increase of compliance requirements for payment service providers. Due to this growing trend of regulation we have decided to suspend the following services until further notice with an effective date of the 21st January 2012:

* The facility to make and receive payments in precious metals to or from other GoldMoney Full Holding customers.

* The facility to convert directly between the various currencies.

Basic Holding owners do not have access to these features and are therefore not affected by this change.

Our research has proven that our customers' use of the metal payments and currency exchange services is not significant and we trust that the suspension of these services will not be inconvenient for the majority of our customers.

In accordance with our Customer Agreement, we are providing advance notice of this change to our services that will take effect on the 21st January 2012 at 12am local London time (GMT). You will be able to make metal payments and currency exchanges up to this date.

We continue to provide a secure and reliable platform for the purchase, sale and storage of your precious metals. This includes enhancing our systems, introducing and adjusting our products and services, and making our website the most effective tool for managing your precious metals portfolio.

With this in mind, we have prepared a brief survey to gauge your interest in current products and also possible future products we may introduce, depending on the feedback we receive from you. The survey can be completed at the link below. All feedback received is anonymous unless you choose to provide us with your contact details.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/goldmoney

We thank you for your continued business, and we will sincerely appreciate any feedback to help us determine the products and services that are of most interest to you.

Kind regards
Your Relationship Management Team

7 comments:

  1. I wonder if it was actually just a cost-cutting measure for GoldMoney -- blame regulations and save face while ditching the payments system that hadn't really been used much.

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  2. This is exactly why decentralization is key to bitcoin. Often when people propose alternatives to bitcoin, they include centralized features. But centralized services will always fall victim to government interference.

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  3. I guess we'll have to use gold for store of value and bitcoin as medium of exchange. Very annoying, but that's what centralized (and regulated) systems leave you vulnerable to.

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  5. Not related to the post, but I just found this article stating that the TF2 Hat economy is valued at approx. $52 million. I hope bitcoin will one day surpass this market, based on a minor aspect of a free to play video game.

    http://kotaku.com/5869042/analyst-pegs-team-fortress-2-hat-economy-at-50-million

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  6. "I guess we'll have to use gold for store of value and bitcoin as medium of exchange."

    What you have described is "Freegold" www.fofoa.blogspot.com

    I wonder if GoldMoney may lose more customers from this move than they think. While customers may not currently use the payment feature, they may have chosen GoldMoney over BullionVault or others on the basis that they could in the future pay others gold in case of hyperinflation or banking holidays. Having lost this unique differenciator, does this leave GoldMoney competing on price (of which it is not the cheapest)?

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  7. GoldNowBanc can be used instead of GM. To get a wallet, go to www.GoldNow.St and request an account. If we get enough demand <> BC, we will add BC as a payment option.

    Graham Kelly CEO
    www.GoldNow.St
    www.GoldNowBanc.St

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