Xiaofan Chen wrote: > On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 12:44 PM, Sean Breheny wrote: >> It is a bit hard to get my head around why people would pay US dollars >> for "virtual dollars" but there is apparently a sizable virtual >> economy going on, with a real exchange rate to USD: >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linden_Dollar > > How about QQ coin by the leading IM company in China Tencent QQ? > It is really amazing that virtual currency can cause great concerns by > the central bank. > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QQ > http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/03/30/1634218&from=rss > http://virtual-economy.org/taxonomy/term/8/0/feed > > And Tencent is not really an online gaming company. Due to the large > online game community in China (it is ruining a large number of young > people in China, a very worrying trend in China), the virtual goods have > been a sizable economy. In fact, some of the most popular malicious > programs in China now steal online gaming accounts and not real bank > accounts. > > > Xiaofan Then there's the real (as in gold/silver) currency that was confiscated by the US FBI and secret service: Interesting, what law says I can't own a certificate saying it's worth some amount of silver? The USD is no more real than the Linden dollar. A virtual currency is only as valuable as what you can buy with it. In that way anything can be currency. There is no guarantee that the dollar is going to worth anything tomorrow, is there? -- Martin Klingensmith -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist