Site is up now ...
I've used e-gold for over five years and am a big advocate of their service. I've had the pleasure of meeting most of the principals in person and they are all exactly the sort of people of which the finance industry needs about a million percent more -- honest, open in business practices but fiercely protective of privacy, knowledgable of the law and economics that pertain to running a functional financial services company.
Given e-gold's more than seven years in business, $ 20 million plus in deposits, non-repudiable transactions (no chargebacks!) and much less expensive operating expenses for merchants compared to credit cards and most other forms of payment processing, it is suprising that more books do not pick it up.
Phaedrus