Thanks very much, you two, for the $20.

One of you commented about an unwillingness to give personal info to a third party. I understand, believe me. :)

I think the "more transparent banking" that's coming into play right now has already introduced some new regulations of the "know your depositor" variety. It's becoming harder to 'interface' with the banking system or any of its adjuncts (e.g., merchants, PayPal, FundRazr) without making known who you are.

As far as I know, that leaves only three options:

- Cash
- Money Order
- Bitcoin

Money Orders can be sent to the address in the left column of the main Reading Room page. They won't be reflected in the FundRazr total but will be received, appreciated, and honored by Rayelan.

Bitcoin is not something we have in place, so far, for RMN contributions. I mention it only because it's the most actually anonymous system I'm aware of. While government seems content to leave it alone for the time being, there's the issue of how government might choose to treat funds converted from Bitcoin into local national currency. I doubt we've heard the last word on that.

I'm remembering what happened to e-gold, a system that was reasonably anonymous and that allowed one's 'deposits' to grow in value as the value of gold increased. e-gold's operators had sought to do the right thing and had contacted various regulators about what they were doing, and were always told they were fine - till one day the DoJ brought the hammer down, shut down e-gold and put all its depositors' funds into receivership.

One thing that was mentioned was that e-gold's relative anonymity allowed it to be used as a payment processor or intermediary by folks who were doing illegal and unsavory things - purveying child pornography, for example.

Surely they must have that same concern about Bitcoin. The only difference is that Bitcoin has no operators in the usual sense and does not rely on centralized servers. That would make it very difficult to shut down, but not impossible to disrupt or generally interfere with. (If you think I'm wrong about that, feel free to let me know.)

Blessings.

--hobie