(from their web site) Effective Feburary 4th, 2011, Gold-Pay will no longer be processing gaming transactions.

(below are Peter Amsel‘s comments on CalvinAyre.com, February 9, 2011)

Gold-Pay.com, so named because their customers nominally purchased gold e-currency for use in online financial transactions, has apparently become the latest payment processor to run afoul of the US justice system. In a recent letter to customers, Gold-Pay reported that “pending legal matters” compelled the company to “suspend all gaming related transactions.” No timeline was provided for the lifting of this suspension, and access to customer accounts “will not be possible until the legal issues have been resolved.” Acknowledging that its decision was “unexpected and unfortunate,” the company apologized for the “disruption.”

World Bank chief calls for gold to anchor forex

(AFP) – 11 hours ago

SINGAPORE — World Bank president Robert Zoellick has called on bickering G20 nations to bring gold back into the global monetary system as an anchor to guide currency movements.

Ahead of a G20 summit this week in Seoul, Zoellick wrote in Monday’s Financial Times that an updated gold standard could contribute to retooling the world economy at a time of tensions over currencies and US monetary policy.

Zoellick said the world needed a new regime to succeed what he called the “Bretton Woods II” system of floating currencies, which has been in place since the fixed-rate currency system linked to gold broke down in 1971.

“Although textbooks may view gold as the old money, markets are using gold as an alternative monetary asset today,” Zoellick wrote in a commentary for the FT.

The new system “is likely to need to involve the dollar, the euro, the yen, the pound and a renminbi (Chinese yuan) that moves towards internationalisation and then an open capital account,” he said.

“The system should also consider employing gold as an international reference point of market expectations about inflation, deflation and future currency values,” Zoellick added.

His comments came amid worries of a so-called “currency war”, when countries jostle for trade advantage by massaging their exchange rates lower.

The United States has led accusations that China cheats in world trade by artificially weakening its currency.

But Washington also stands accused of tolerating a weak dollar, roiling emerging markets whose own currencies are rising strongly, hurting their export competitiveness.

The complaints have intensified since the Federal Reserve last week announced a 600-billion-dollar shot of monetary stimulus — in effect printing money that other economies worry will flood their markets.

Zoellick also called on the Group of 20, whose leaders meet in the South Korean capital on Thursday and Friday, to forge structural reforms, including more domestic demand in China and more debt-reduction in the United States.

Major economies “should agree to forego currency intervention, except in rare circumstances agreed to by others”, he added.

The G20 could work out tools to help emerging economies cope with the kinds of hot-money flows that are now driving up their currencies and creating fears of asset bubbles.

And the G20 should “support growth by focusing on supply-side bottlenecks in developing countries”, such as infrastructure, agriculture and a lack of skilled labour, Zoellick said.

“Perhaps most importantly, this package could get governments ahead of problems instead of reacting to economic, political and social storms,” the World Bank chief argued.

Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/…

Related articles

• Bring back the gold standard, says World Bank chief (telegraph.co.uk)
• World Bank president Robert Zoellick suggests new gold standard (marketwatch.com)
• You: World Bank chief calls for new gold standard (menafn.com)
• World Bank President Proposes Return To Gold Standard: FT (forexlive.com)

German Sterligov, the Russian millionaire who emerged from a hermit-like existence to fight the global economic crisis, is moving forward with his efforts, BFM.ru reports. His initial ideas about returning to a system of natural exchange have developed into a plan to create an exchange system based on gold.

Last October, Sterligov set up his ASCENT (Anticrisis Settlement & Commodity Centre), “a global system of countertrade and debt settlement,” according to the center’s website, using €15 million that Sterligov claims to have been keeping under an oak tree. Now the center is issuing gold coins as “internal payment units.”

The coins are made of 999.9 fine gold and weigh one troy ounce. A small lot of the coins was minted in Kostroma, but large-scale minting will take place in Great Britain or Colombia for legal reasons. A tender for their production has already been announced.

According to BFM.ru, Sterligov and his investors have a pool of about 375 tons of gold, worth almost $12 billion, in London alone. ASCENT has offices in London, Hong Kong, Moscow, Dubai, Kiev, Almaty and Kabul and it operates in 17 countries.

The gold coins will not go into actual circulation. They will be kept by a Swiss firm and, as transactions take place among ASCENT clients, ownership of the gold will be tracked with modern technology. The fact that the coins are used for internal settlement is important, since ASCENT has no right to issue a new form of money. Sterligov compared the coins to “tokens” in his interview with BFM.ru. Analysts note that, in Russia, the ownership of gold is permitted, but the use of surrogates for the ruble is not.

Read the full story:

http://www.mosnews.com/money/2009/07/02/sterligold/

Chips...Pretzels...popcorn...ah, gold bullion, A9 there it is.

German’s are buying gold. Of course this is no surprise to most people. In fact the fist quarter of this year, 59 tons of gold ingots and coins were sold to private individuals in Germany. That is 4 times higher than the same period a year prior.

Soon, if you are Frankfurt-am-Main you can buy gold from the local vending machine for about 31 euro per gram. Of course that price changes throughout the day just a bit– due to the market fluctuations. (no you can’t arrive at midnight to the machine and get the previous days prices before they change Credit or cash from the machine, the price per gram is the same and each piece is sealed and comes with the certificate of authenticity.

The company behind the project, The TG-Gold-Super-Markt company, plans to have about 500 of these machines in public and working across Germany this year. Precious metal from a vending machine, what will they think of next?