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Interview WithFree Market Money GuruJim Davidson of Vertoro
Intervew by Mark Herpel DigitalMoneyWorld.comJim has been an ever present force in the digi-tal currency world for almost a decade. He shareswith me his ideas on free market money, preciousmetals and digital currency. I appreciate Jim takingtime to answer my questions.
(Q)Where does the name Vertoro come from?
Vertoro is a combination of the French word “vert”meaning green, and the Italian word “oro” mean-ing gold.
(Q)So the name implies your motto, going fromgreen American dollars to gold money?
Yes, that’s the idea. We think that it is vital for busi-nesses and individuals to make that move fromgreen to gold.
(Q)What are your reasons for urging people todo so?
The ones we tend to emphasize are going global
with gold, hedging against ination with gold and
silver, and using free market currency to avoid an-ti-market forces.Gold is a world currency and certainly one of thetwo oldest currencies. Gold and silver are bothmentioned in the Old Testament, they were usedin coins thousands of years ago, and they arewidely accepted. In my own travels, I’ve been ableto convert gold and silver coins to local currencyin every country I’ve visited in Europe, Africa, Asia,and North America.
Ination is a tax on wealth. If you hold your wealth
as dollars, you get hit with that tax. The guys whomake dollars, both at the printing press and in thebanks, generate more dollars all the time.
Since dollars are not in xed supply, the value of 
the dollars changes. Generally, over time, mon-
etary policy has been inationary.
Gold and silver also expand in supply, as more of these metals are discovered.But, they expand at a much more consistent rateover the long run than paper money.Finally, gold and silver are market-chosen money.The free market principles which I believe are thebest economic policy should be practiced not onlyat the national level, but more importantly at thelocal level. Individuals and businesses should usefree market money - money with value derivedfrom its acceptability in the market rather than anyedict or decree.
(Q) What is your full name and your position atVertoro?
People call me Jim. When you go to the Wikipe-dia disambiguation page on “Jim Davidson” you
nd me where it says “James Eric Davidson.”VertoroI’m the chief executive ofcer at Vertoro.
(Q) What does Vertoro do?
Vertoro is a consulting services company. We of-fer extensive services in communications security,privacy, data security, encryption, hardware andsoftware systems for secure communications, freemarket money, web development, e-commerce,
 
and marketing. As a result of our specialties, wedo a lot of contract programming of one sort or another.
(Q) Those specialties sound rather diverse. Isthere a common thread?
Yes, sure. In fact, the common thread is informa-tion. Money is just a special type of information.The very earliest data we have about money sug-gests that ancient man kept records of wealth rep-
resented by ocks of sheep or herds of cattle by
notching bones with tally marks. Nowadays, we
keep track of wealth by ipping bits in computer 
systems, so that a bank account shows a certainbalance.
More signicantly, the value of information may
be the value of your entire business enterprise.If someone steals your laptop and gains access
to all the condential records of your customers,
you may be out of business tomorrow. If you don’thave a secure backup, you may not be able to dobusiness.If your records are compromised, you may have toreimburse a lot of customers who expected you tokeep their data secure. The government may shutyou down for having lax data security. And that’salready happened - lots of laptops have been sto-len and over 150 million customer records havebeen compromised as a result.So, we create value by deploying effective infor-mation systems which use the latest techniquesfor data security. We also create value by providingaccess to markets around the world and in manyspecialty niches which simply cannot be reachedwithout good data security, use of digital money,and online gold.
(Q) What would you consider to be your spe-cialty?
The one thing I’m any good at is writing. I havea certain facility at taking ideas from various dif-ferent technical specialties, thinking about them,and then writing about them in a clear, simple way.
Sometimes, people nd they understand what I’ve
written.
(Q) How long have you worked in nancialconsulting and when did you open your rst
digital gold account?
My business school studies were in marketing and
entrepreneurship. I guess my rst job in nancial
consulting was working as an intern for SpaceServices Incorporated, developing their businessplans, writing software for their real estate divi-
sion, and helping them nd a market for their pay
-load launching business in the university sciencecommunity. That would have been in 1986.
My rst digital gold account came in December 
1998. I was involved in a Texas constitution reformproject and the guy running it agreed to reimbursemy expenses with e-gold. So, I opened the 1,468the-gold account. Once I got started, though, it be-came exciting. In those days, you could redeemtwo tenths of an ounce of e-gold and they wouldmail you a gold coin. It was fantastic. Occasion-ally I hear someone recite how large an upwardmove has taken place in the price of gold over thepast two years, and then they tell me it’s too lateto buy. Fools and their money are soon parted, myfriend.
(Q) How many other people are employed atVertoro and is there anyone I might know?
All our staff, including me, are contractors. Wework closely with a team of consultants and con-tractors who provide all kinds of specialties includ-ing accounting, marketing, programming, webdevelopment, publicity, media relations, and other 
services. We have a chief technology ofcer, Kev
-in Wilkerson. We also have a set of very good re-
lationships with nanciers, so we place deals with
them and help companies raise money. Our po-litical risk consultant is Sandy Sandfort. You mayhave read a few things he’s written. Over the yearshe’s been published in places like Wired magazineand the like. He has forgotten more things aboutthe law and international company structures thanI’ve ever learned.One of the guys I work with quite closely is Court-ney Smith. He used to run a leading hedge fundand a top-rated newsletter and a top-rated stock
fund. So, he’s something of a nance whiz.
 
He and I have worked about half a dozen deals inthe last year, taking companies public, bringing innew capital, going overseas to offshore stock mar-
kets to tap other sources of nancing.
(Q) Is Kevin Wilkerson an important part of theVertoro organization?
I would say so. He’s the chief technology ofcer.
We rely on him to evaluate technology, developsystems, identify programmers, put together theproject teams that actually implement softwareand hardware systems, and handle some of theparts of the market which he knows best.
(Q) What kinds of digital gold currency do yousell at Vertoro?
Mostly, that is e-gold and Pecunix. We sell a tinybit of eCache. As a practical matter, we sell whatthe market wants. Pretty much we sell all kinds.That is, all the kinds that are actually gold. So, if we cannot verify that there is gold, if the currencycannot be redeemed into actual gold, we don’ttouch it.
(Q) Is Vertoro an exchange provider and can Isell gold to the company?
Vertoro? No. Vertoro is a gold dealer. That meansthat we sell gold coins, silver coins, and digitalwarehouse receipts for gold or silver. We do notever buy from the public. An exchange provider isa sort of money changer and, therefore, as we’vebeen advised, a type of money service business.These days, money service businesses are regu-lated in most markets. A gold dealer, on the other hand, just sells gold or silver to the public. Since agold dealer does not buy from the public, that’s nota money service business, again, as we’ve beenadvised, under the current legal and regulatory re-gime.(Q) What type of ventures has Vertoro been in-volved with over the past several years?Most of our work has been in asset protection,communications security, and systems integration.We have been consulting on private placement
and public nancial market offerings for about two
years.
(Q) Can I raise equity nancing through Ver 
-toro?
We are not a broker nor a dealer in securities. To
raise equity nancing, we would refer you to our 
network of contacts in those industries, which areextensive.
(Q) Or can you arrange nancing for a private
company wanting to go public?
We have contacts in the business of taking com-panies public, not only in the USA, but also in Eu-rope and Asia.
(Q) When building a larger and stronger online
digital gold economy, which comes rst the
merchants or the users?
The merchants come rst. But, the users are easy
to bring. The reason e-gold became the leadingdigital gold currency is very simple: they had areferral program. Their referral program split therevenues from the payment receive fee betweenthe person referring the spender and the personreferring the recipient. It worked. And the leadingmerchants were the ones who did the most to pro-mote e-gold.
(Q) As long as I have been online and touting
the benets of digital gold currency, not too
many people have put away their plastic andreplaced it with e-gold or Pecunix.
I wouldn’t expect all forms of plastic to go away.Fiat money is actually in circulation rather thangold and silver because of Gresham’s law. So, itis well to have systems that inter-operate between
gold and at. One of the projects I’ve been asked
to consult on is a digital gold card where the bal-ance is held in gold but the payments are in lo-cal currencies. Even with all the CC fraud, high ripoff interest rates people still use their plastic whenshopping online. About 90% of all US online trans-actions are paid with plastic.
(Q) What’s it going to take to get people tochange?
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