Licensing Will Encourage Open Systems; Also Aims to Maintain High Standards for Digital Gold Currency

17 October 2001 - GoldMoney has today announced that its patents for digital gold currency are available for licensing. These patents, awarded by the US Patent office in September 1997 and November 1999, can be accessed through the GoldMoney.com website.

Digital gold currency (DGC) is an important achievement for the development and growth of global ecommerce. DGC makes possible instantaneous payments that are non-repudiable, and payments can be made reliably, yet inexpensively anywhere in the world at any time of day or night. These attributes are important for the development of online commerce, and particularly cross-border transactions, an area that many believe represents great potential for economic growth.

GoldMoney is more efficient than anything the banks have to offer through their existing payment systems. While banks can use today's technology to make clearing and settlement more efficient, this process itself is outdated. Bank settlement and clearing systems have their origin in the 18th century, and are exceptionally cumbersome for cross-border payments. Efforts today to make clearing and settlement more efficient ignore the basic fact that the clearing process itself is not workable in ecommerce, which requires instantaneous, 24/7 payments that are non-repudiable. Importantly, these are the results that GoldMoney achieves.

"We invented DGC in order to create a payment mechanism that will serve the needs of global commerce, without the high cost and risks inherent in present payment systems," said James Turk, Managing Director of GoldMoney. "Now that we have built GoldMoney with high standards for reliability and have implemented rock-solid governance procedures that provide users with clear assurances of integrity, we will consider the licensing of our DGC patents to qualified firms willing to maintain these same high standards that we have achieved in GoldMoney."

He stated that GoldMoney's goals for licensing its patents are consistent with its long-held objectives. The first of these is to create an open system. GoldMoney is an open system because of the ease by which participants can place gold into or remove gold out of the system. Further, GoldMoney undertakes these transactions without any charge. Said Turk: "In the broadest sense people can use our system to turn gold bullion into currency that is then circulated electronically."

The second objective of GoldMoney has been to create a payment system that provides DGC users with high standards for system quality and performance. These standards provide users with assurances of integrity for system reliability. They also include the representations GoldMoney makes to all of its users, particularly those relating to governance. "Our established governance procedures we believe set the highest possible standard. And our users have independent third-party confirmation that our representations are accurate because we have just completed the first of what are ongoing examinations by our auditors, Deloitte & Touche," Turk added.

He went on to say: "The integrity of the payment system is the fundamental building block of commerce. Existing systems are outmoded because they are too slow and expensive to meet the needs of 21st century ecommerce. And the opportunity for DGC is becoming increasingly apparent." Noting that there is vast potential for DGC to surpass the integrity of payment mechanisms now used in global commerce, he added, "We expect DGC to emerge as the preferred payment mechanism, but only if DGC is implemented properly in an open way with safeguards and unquestionable reliability. We will defend the basic property rights granted to us under the patents to protect DGC from firms that operate unreliable payment systems and firms that are unable or unwilling to meet the vital and critically important criteria we have established for system integrity."

This statement by GoldMoney makes clear its intent. Not only is GoldMoney committed to continue improving its services and expanding through an open system, but it also aims to make DGC the preferred payment mechanism for online global ecommerce.

It will achieve this objective by providing assurances to the marketplace that firms offering DGC payment mechanisms operating under the GoldMoney patents will be meeting the same high standards that GoldMoney has already achieved. And GoldMoney will defend its property rights from those firms offering DGC but are unwilling or unable to meet the high standards implemented by GoldMoney.

As the inventor of DGC, GoldMoney is setting the global standard for instantaneous, 24/7 non-repudiable payments.

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GoldMoney is digital gold currency - gold in digital form that can be spent and transferred electronically. By converting the world's oldest money into a new and much-needed digital currency, GoldMoney allows consumers, merchants and consumers to avoid the intrusion and expense of credit cards as well as the hassle of using conventional fiat currencies online. GoldMoney founder, James Turk is the creator and GoldMoney is the patent holder to this asset-based online transaction system. GoldMoney services can be accessed at GoldMoney.com.

For more information contact:
James Turk
Founder, GoldMoney
info@goldmoney.com