>How much gold is in a gram of digital gold? And more importantly, do the >differences in the fineness of the various digital currencies affect the use >of the AUG (one gram of gold) as a standard unit of digital currency? See >what James Turk, Douglass Jackson, and Mike Singleton have to say in the >newest article at www.goldeconomy.com . Another absolutely fabulous article, Ken! Boy, will it cause some discussion. Some thoughts: (i) Ken, you say that "E-gold ... use London Good Delivery Bars". Is that now OFFICIAL E-GOLD POLICY? ie, are all 146 bars LGD bars? Or is this just what you observe, Ken, or is it a casual (but not official) comment from someone at e-gold, or does it now appear somewhere on the e-gold site, or what? I'm dying to know! (ii) It seems like a knock-down obviosity that e-gold, GoldMoney and any other DGCs would work with *fine* weight of gold. No one in the history of the universe has ever done otherwise when dealing with gold! If you buy a "one ounce" Kruggerand, it physically weighs 1.05263 ounces (Kruggerands are made of 95% gold alloy) .... but no-one has ever, ever, said "oh, that Kruggerand is 1.05263 ounces, today's price is 1.05263 x $300". That would be bizarre! (iii) For instance consider this very confusing comment from Doug (are you reading, Doug?!): "Back when the inventory tables were designed the physical assets were coins and kilos of standardized sizes"" but the ... "NEXT generation Examiner will display assets by fine weight. " But Doug: coins expressed as "one ounce" coins ********are in fact******* one ounce of ****fine**** weight. They do not physically weigh one ounce, they weigh whatever (Kruggerands .. 1.05263 ounces, Maples, a cunhair over 1.00 ounces, etc), they all contain one *fine* ounce of gold. The same is true of kilo bars. They are mean to contain one *fine* kilo .. at 9999, the actual physical weight is 10,000/9,999 kilos. Thus, if the "current" examiner (as opposed to the "NEXT generation" one) works in coin-weights (example, 10,000 Kruggerands .. 10,000 *fine* ounces), IT ALREADY WORKS IN FINE WEIGHT. Which is completely normal and what you would expect. When you buy a LGD bar, no one is going to tell you the physical weight, and you're not going to pay based on that weight, that would be nonsensical. Somewhere at e-gold there's a list of weights of all their LGD bars .... all being the fine weights. (iv) Mr. Mike Singleton's comments are perhaps more confusing! I completely agree that it's clever of e-bullion to use Kilobars, becuase, they are more liquid -- that's fantastic idea. However his negative comments about LGD bars make little sense, as, all the same facts apply to kilobars. Consider this comment: ""It just seems pretty ridiculous to me [to use fine weight as the unit of account] since the ONLY time purity counts for anything is when you take possession - how do you take possession of a Gold Gram? If you take delivery on a bar from GM -- do they reverse calculate the amount of GG's on account -- with whichever Bar you happen to take possession of (so I can give them less then 12,500 GG's for a Bar)? " But that is in fact *****exactly what happens****** every time, ever, that any LGD bar -- or any gold bar! -- has ever been sold! If you want to take delivery of a bar from GoldMoney, or egold, they would naturally tell you a list of the various bar weights they have on hand (obviously, that's fine weight), and you would pick one, and "pay" (so to speak) that many GoldGrams equal to the fine weight of the bar. (There can be no other situation .. how else could it work?) The only difference with Kilobars vs large bars is that kilobars are all titularly the same weight. Of course, that's wrong too. Say you're buying a small pile of 100 kilobars. It's inconceivable any bullion dealer would go "oh, so that's 100.00000 kilos then, here's a check". No, you put them on a scale and see what the total weight is. Then you multiply by the fineness, and get a resulting number of fine grams or ounces, and pay based on that fine weight. (Here's an interesting anecdote ... the only one time I ever sold a Kilobar (it was to Dillon-Gage), as it happened, it didn't weigh anything like a kilo! It was out by about 4 1/4 grams (I can't recall if it was up or down).) Just some thoughts! JP --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Did you know that e-gold Ltd. stores more gold on behalf of customers than many countries? See http://www.gold.org/Gra/Gra1.htm and the e-gold Examiner at http://www.e-gold.com/examiner.html for details.
