In terms of immediate impacts:

* The OmniPay exchange service will suspend operation pending provisioning of a suitable bank account for OmniPay Africa. It is anticipated this service interruption will start May 24, 2007 with service resuming on or about June 18, 2007.
* With resumption, all bank wires from customers must be directed to the new bank coordinates which will be posted on the omnipay.com website.

The original plan was for OmniPay Africa to organize as a licensee of G&SR, the US company that owns OmniPay. A substantial development effort was underway to support the additional requirements for over-the-counter exchange operations such as biometric validation. However, recent actions of the US government, originating from a long-standing and misguided animus on the part of the US Secret Service, necessitate immediate action. Specifically, SEB Bank in Estonia has notified G&SR it is closing its bank account at close of business May 25, 2007 explicitly because of the Press Release from the US DOJ.

We regret the temporary interruption of OmniPay services. Just as the US government’s recent actions in seizing e-gold accounts of e-gold Ltd., G&SR, The Bullion Exchange, AnyGoldNow, IceGold, GitGold, The Denver Gold Exchange, GoldPouch Express and 1MDC (and forcing G&SR to liquidate the seized assets!) have severely damaged not only these exchange businesses but also their innumerable customers, their forcing this complex transition to be performed on an emergency basis is simply shameful.

We do not however regret the transfer of OmniPay responsibilities to OmniPay Africa. As will become abundantly clear in coming months, the OmniPay Africa team is highly qualified to guide OmniPay to a higher level, a genuinely global service that will foster a beneficial surge in e-gold’s emergence while bringing significant advantages to emerging economies.

Strategic Background

A major strategic emphasis for e-gold is to provide sophisticated remote payments capabilities to the majority of mankind underserved by or excluded by the banking system. An important focus is international remittances - payments from migrant workers living in advanced economies sending a portion of their earnings to their home country. For many developing economies, migrant remittances constitute a significant portion of foreign exchange income and even GDP. Traditional remittance mechanisms, however, are expensive and inflexible. It is estimated that lowering the net cost of remittances by a few percentage points could measurably enhance economic development. There is also increasing awareness that non-traditional banking such as micro-credit facilities can also aid in bootstrapping lesser developed economies.

OmniPay Africa, an entirely non-US company, majority owned by prominent business leaders from the Francophone countries of West Africa, was therefore organized to extend the usefulness of e-gold by providing support for over-the-counter exchange and by fostering the integration of e-gold into micro-credit lending institutions. The combination of e-gold (settling the international transfer of value with no need for a financial intermediary) and OmniPay (offering standardized, reliable, low cost exchange to/from local currency) will serve as a flexible low cost alternative to the traditional systems.

First off, our heartfelt gratitude goes out to alot of you who supported us through thick and thin and believed in us by re-purchasing and promoting our site. Thank you for the trust and confidence you have placed in our unique Knight system.

Its a great concept which fell prey to many variables and did not reach its full potential. Purchases and new membership did not trickle in as expected past few weeks especially after the egold situation.

On hindsight, as many of our knights know, we went through many obstacles from host complains and moving servers multiple times to false accusations to egold and having many of our egold accounts blocked then and even now. Even when we paid promptly everyday the site was up, we were victims of fake bad votes. There was also trolling especially from members who are paid and are in profit. The biggest blow of all were the 22 days of incessant DDoS attacks that took us offline for almost 2 weeks and put a dent on our success. Nevertheless, we paid for top-notch security which kept the site online despite the continued DDoS attacks. However, our worst fear came true and it was all a little too late by then.

Up until the DDoS attacks, site was doing phenomenally well to the extent that if that exponential growth had continued without any disruptions, we would have build up a reserve so huge that it would have helped LightHalzen sustain for many months down the road. Even after engaging Black Lotus Anti-DDoS package, we were still being heavily DDoSed and site had to sustain further downtime. This time around, new members especially those who just joined our esteemed Knighthood, confidence amongst them diminished substantially and started to withdraw their rebates just to exit out of the program. Unfortunately momemtum lost from then on. Even then, we admins persevered and embarked on an extensive advertising and promotional campaign all over monitors and numerous forums. The quest to succeed was driving us forward.

Ultimately, the biggest unexpected blow was the news of egold indictment. Egold being our only payment processor until then caused a major impact on our program as many in the industry went on a panic mode pulling their funds out and even members didn’t re-purchase as much as they used to. The egold fiasco had a ripple effect on the industry as a whole which further crushed the momentum as new membership was at a standtill and this only further crippled the site. After the egold drama, things did not pick up as we had hoped and thats when we finally dug into the reserve pool of funds. This was necessary as we were not at the stage to allow the LSP to dip below the MAX LEVEL. If we did not do what we did, there would have been a total loss of momentum which would have resulted in the sudden death of the site back then. We were hoping that the panic mode would die down but if you recalled, our thread at MMG was turned into an egold discussion thread.

Fear and uncertainty was rampant in the air. The first course of action we took was to quickly add another payment processor E-Bullion, hoping in vain that things would pick up. Unfortunately, this move did not bring about the results we had hoped for and we had depleted our reserves by then. Which was why Stage 3 Revamp was vital but this led to a major uproar amongst the masses who started pulling out from the program. Our next move was to add

Alertpay but even then, we admins ended up using all of our admin funds to help boost the program, hoping in vain once again that the situation would improve with stable rates and cycle the shares out.

As its evident, its been a constant long drawn out battle for us admins with tons of variables which were beyond our control but yet, we kept coming up with various solutions and never once gave up hope. Someone else in our shoes would have bailed out long ago. We were determined to run this site which was why we continued embarking on our advertising and promotional campaign, buying banners and sponsoring vidcasts. Disgruntled members due to the reduced max LSP did not wish to vote anymore. Paying promptly did not matter anymore as people were more into high risky ROI gambling.

Even after 2 weeks of max 5% LSP, site still failed to show any improvement and since reserves were depleted completely, we could not complete our payouts yesterday as we had to wait the following day’s purchases to clear the previous day’s rebates. When current purchases and reserves are in negative and with purchases not trickling in as expected, we are left with no option but to close the doors of our beloved Castle. Some may wonder, this is a Profit Share site, why not just let LSP take a dip? This wont work out, because it will just cause a domino effect where the next day is 1% followed by 0.1% then 0.01%. If LightHalzen was launched last year, we might have succeeded. However, factors beyond our control such as the egold fiasco is something we never anticipated to hit us as hard as it did.

This has been a great learning curve especially in terms of getting the best security and which ads and promotions bring about maximum exposure for a site but most importantly, we had the pleasure and feel blessed to have met some of the best people left standing in this industry.

We would fondly miss our [milk] Mods and many of our superb Knights to which we can not thank enough. May God Bless all of you with abundance of wealth and good health.

Refunds would be impossible as reserves have been depleted to a negative level. And for those who wish to audit our egold accounts, please feel free to email us for login details.

We admins will still be around the forums and please accept our apology for those who incurred losses. We will still be here to answer any queries and concern you might have and are not going anywhere.

Sincerely,
LightHalzen Team

He’s been banned once. We decided to let him have his account back because then [i]we know where he is[/i]. He’d just make another account under another proxy, it all gets a bit futile sometimes.

Of course it gives the conspiracy nuts something to rattle about……..He’s been banned once. We decided to let him have his account back because then we know where he is. He’d just make another account under another proxy, it all gets a bit futile sometimes.

Of course it gives the conspiracy nuts something to rattle about……..