e-gold was shut down by the government for running an unlicensed money service business. They were officially Nevis based, but actually run out of Melbourne, FL (where they started originally); criminal charges were involved. The main reason was a particularly motivated federal prosecutor and the specific uses e-Gold users found -- child porn, paying for stolen cc's, etc. It wasn't a general thing about PATRIOT/MSB laws.
osGold was just an internal fraud; digital currency, give me your (gold) and issue tokens -- then one day it disappeared, taking the original value with it.
There were hack attacks by third parties against some other gold currency systems at the time, but I don't remember the details.
