There is a realm of things that are 'interesting' but 'very controversial', in the sense that most mainstream economists, right or left, view the gold standard as more or less nutty, and of course, the 'nuts' don't like being viewed as such. The ensuing discussion is never pretty, and is completely unrelated to hacker news. Some of us would prefer to just not see it here. You can talk about that kind of thing here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/

Whether you believe in the gold standard or not, this article was not about that.

There are many things they did that are very applicable to current startups. In particular governance models and transparency are very much issues that current startups need to worry about.

The point about Know Your Customer is also an important one. In the 90's when e-gold started there was a lot of experimenting with this. Most people in the industry were weary about government involvement, but didn't think it was going to affect them.

At some point it isn't inconceivable that social networks, email service providers and others will be required to follow similar Know Your Customer procedures to banks. Several countries are already starting to institute this.

>most mainstream economists, right or left, view the gold standard as more or less nutty

Sorry for continuing this particular topic of conversation, but that is entirely false. Most economists don't advocate a gold standard, but you will find serious discussion of it in any mainstream economic journal that touches on monetary policy or history. The monetary system that served most of the Western world for several millennia is not considered "nutty" in academic circles.

At least, we discussed works by several modern advocates of the gold standard that regularly publish in mainstream economic journals in my Money and Banking class.

Egold was NOT about the gold standard, although the article makes it out to be. It may have shifted towards that in the very end due to the tightening regulations that forced them to abandon their initial purposes, but gold really had little to do with it. Get it straight.

These regulations are what make online payments that are as easy as cash legally impossible. It's a serious detriment to startups.

It was an interesting read, but it wasn't 'brought down by the man'. A better title should be: know and follow the applicable laws before making a startup.