Digital Gold Currencies under scrutiny

E-Gold News
E-Gold is in trouble right now. 1MDC’s site showed the following message today:

ATTENTION

Friday Apr 27 2007 – 4AM UTC

It appears that a U.S. Government court order has forced e-gold(R) to freeze or block all of 1mdc’s accounts.

All of 1mdc account’s have been frozen at e-gold for unknown reasons.

Please note that it appears a few accounts of a small number of large exchangers and users of e-gold have also been frozen overnight. (Millions of Euros of gold have been involved in this event.)

If the freeze or court order in the USA is reversed, your e-gold grams remaining in 1mdc will “unbail” normally to your e-gold account and all procedures will be normal.

We suggest not panicking: more will be known on Monday when there will be more activity in the courts.

You CAN spend your 1mdc back and fore to other 1mdc accounts. 1mdc is operating normally within 1mdc.

However, you should be aware that for now the e-gold remains under the court order.

Ultimately e-gold(R) is an entirely USA-based company, owned and operated by US citizens, so, e-gold users operate by the decisions of US courts regarding the disposition of e-gold. Even though 1mdc has no connection whstsoever to the USA, and most 1mdc users are non-USA, e-gold(R) is USA based.

You are welcome to email “team@1mdc.com”, thank you.

To read up on this situation, I suggest you go over to Jude’s NOBS blog. Also read more about it on InfoWorld.

I transferred all my E-Gold to my Forex broker (North Finance), so I will still be able to wire it to a bank. For those who have a lot stored in E-Gold, I suggest you do the same. (Scoop: DrunksWorld & Jude’s NOBS blog)

Gold News
As I predicted earlier, Gold has made its temporary pullback before getting ready to ride the bulls again. For Gold investors, I advise to wait until the next rise signalling that the correction is over and Gold will become bullish again.

Spot gold prices rose against the US Dollar as New York opened today as Washington announced the slowest quarterly GDP growth in four years.

Gold rose to $678 per ounce just ahead of the London PM Fix after trading flat throughout the Asian and early European sessions.

Against Sterling and Euros, however, gold was little changed.

The overnight market in Asia was slow ahead of a 3-day holiday in Japan and then a week’s shutdown in China starting on Tuesday.

“I think sentiments remain positive,” said one Hong Kong dealer. “What happened in this market is just a correction.”

Gold had risen for seven weeks running before dropping 1.7% during the first half of London trade Thursday.

Source: BV

Dollar News
This Friday the Dollar made a flash pullback against the Euro because of GBP numbers rolling in. Though I think this move underscores the fundamental weakness of the Dollar, it seems the average U.S. consumer will remain blind to this problem.

CHICAGO – Stop all the fretting: The U.S. consumer is not going to collapse anytime soon. Most likely, she never will. Although Friday’s report that the U.S. economy grew at its slowest pace in four years gave wind to what is becoming an age-old debate about whether the consumer can continue to hold up the economy, there’s no reason to get heated up about it.

“If you bet against the consumer, you’re going to lose every time,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at Jeffries & Co. That, he insists, has been as true over the past 10 years as it has the past 50 and then some. The rate of the increase might be puny, but the economy will hobble along, and consumers will continue to find ways to buy the things they want. Economists are nearly unanimous in this conclusion: Americans will never stop wanting to keep up with the Joneses.

Friday’s GDP numbers underscored just that. Rising energy prices coupled with a weak housing market slowed things down a bit, but the growth in the first quarter was led — once again — by consumer spending

Source: MW

CHICAGO – The U.S. economy is riding four straight quarters of subpar growth, creating a dilemma for the Federal Reserve as concerns about a possible recession rise even as price pressures stick around.

Economists contend it is difficult for the United States to bump along in first or second gear for too long without “the big engine that could” slipping into neutral.

Source: Reuters

Once a Week
Since I have gotten a job in consultancy, I now have little time left to keep blogging daily. This means I will be issuing updates only once a week from now on.
Edit: This could be even less, as I am much busier at the moment than I was before.