Internet payment system e-gold now holds around 2.5 ton of gold, an increase of 40 percent since 2004 and more than the official gold reserves of countries like Chile and Luxembourg.
"The e-gold system has now surpassed 27 out of 109 gold-holding nations and is on track to exceed Canada's gold reserves by year-end," e-gold founder Douglas Jackson said in a statement.
The system
A Canadian, for example, can pay a German the correct weight of gold for goods or services as easily as if the price had been quoted in a national currency.
The system currently processes over 10 million user-to-user payments annually with a value exceeding $1 billion.
According to e-gold's Web Site, the most frequent gold spend over the past 24 hours fell in the 10-100 milligram range, for a total of 455 grams (14.6 troy ounces).
Spot gold currently trades at around $433 an ounce.
But the amount of gold involved is still only a fraction of bullion's ever-shrinking share of central bank foreign exchange reserves, which stood at just over 31,000 tons as of June 2005.
Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited.
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