

What It's Like to Work at Beenz.com Inc. (2000) - paulgb
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Financial&articleId=49034

======
MrFoof
I think what's most terrifying is they raised roughly $100,000,000 USD in
funding, from folks like Larry Ellison at that.

It was a glorified loyalty reward program. They did however manage a
partnership with MasterCard that allowed members to credit beenz to their
account, and they allowed some other online reward point sites to convert
their currency to beenz as well.

If I remember right, they dealt with a lot of scrutiny from governments since
their end-game plan was to have beenz be a commonly accepted currency, and for
members to convert real money to beenz. They even employed a few economists to
orchestrate the buying/selling of beenz from/to partnering merchants, making
their margin on the spread.

~~~
teilo
Why not? Aside from violating (unconstitutional) legal tender laws, Beenz
would have had no less intrinsic value than the fiat currency used to buy
them. They were never a real threat to the Fed.

Now, someone comes up with a gold backed electronic currency, THAT is a real
threat to the Fed, and they are shut down rather quickly. Why? Because, unlike
Fed notes, a gold backed electronic currency would have real intrinsic value.

~~~
philwelch
There's nothing unconstitutional about legal tender laws, the Constitution
explicitly gives Congress the authority to pass laws regulating the issue of
legal US currency.

There are gold backed electronic currencies, and a lot of people will tell you
gold is more valuable than fiat money, so they will gladly take all of your
fiat money and give you some gold electronic currency in exchange. Gold is a
_crap_ currency. It's just as "fiat" as dollar bills, except (a) commodity
backed currencies are totally ruined by gold rushes, (b) using commodities as
currency distorts the market value of that commodity, and (c) a gold standard
would lead to deflation, which would be an economic disaster.

All of which misses the main point, which is that you took a discussion of a
failed startup from the dot-com era and used it as a springboard into a
totally unrelated recitation of half-baked goldbug talking points that are off
topic and for that matter rather crankish. Little different than if there was
a failed dot-com that centered around teaching kids about biology, and someone
commented on it just to push some creationist viewpoint.

(Trying to make up a little for missing the down-arrow and accidentally
modding you up.)

~~~
tybris
An oasis of reason, in a desert of insanity.

------
tybris
I wonder what happened to my beenz. It was quite a crazy thing with people
paying up to $1 to have you visit their website.

~~~
4ensic
I think they're has-beenz now...

