Silver Certificates are not illegal - Just unavailable. Last time I looked, anyway. regards, Jack On 3/30/08, Martin Klingensmith wrote: > 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 > -- http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist