hyperlexic

I think these MMOs or any organization should be able to create their own currency and compete in the "free market" with any other 'official' currency. let people accept whatever currency they want. if the grocery store starts taking 'poop-dollars' from my little flash game called 'poop farm', awesome. they won't, because there's not much they can do with that. but what if they accepted Facebook Bucks? what if you could give people Facebook Bucks in your app or game or just give them to friends like you do with dollars using PayPal? Now it gets interesting. China had to really crack down on a certain virtual currency a few years back, because it started really competing with the "real" currency - you know, the one they use to manipulate export prices? what if the dollar actually had some real global competition from a private organization that just happened to be friggin huge enough to do it? imagine a cabal of apple, google, zynga, facebook, msft, amazon, walmart, macy's and twitter along with the bigger MMOs signing a binding agreement that recognizes a new currency - it would absolutely change the entire world economy - for the better in my opinion. who cares about the crooks and money launderers? let them do their thing. i bet you walmart is 10,000 times better at spotting and eliminating fraud than the feds. you can't really control inflation / deflation anyway - even with total control of the printing press that's become obvious these days. If this ever happened, the next day Iran would probably price its oil in WoW cash just to spite the west. imagine china dumping their dollar reserves to replace them with bonds backed by the full faith of Rockstar Games or Zynga Treasuries? what's really the difference between any fiat currency other than the ability of the money creator to kick the crap out of everyone else? make software, not war.