Offers an informative examination of the pros and cons of virtual money in its myriad forms. Beginning with the growth of the credit card in the mid-sixties, Solomon (economics, GWU) goes on to explore exotic new E-monies such as "Smart Cards," e-cash, electronic wallets, and cybermoney. Also covers upcoming innovations such as electronic benefits transfers (EBT), which may replace food stamps by 1999. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Play Money explores a remarkable new phenomenon that's just beginning to enter public consciousness: MMORPGs, or Massively MultiPlayer Online Role-Playing Games, in which hundreds of thousands of players operate fantasy characters in virtual environments the size of continents. With city-sized populations of nearly full-time players, these games generate their own cultures, governments, and social systems and, inevitably, their own economies, which spill over into the real world. The desire for virtual goods -- magic swords, enchanted breastplates, and special, hard-to-get elixirs -- has spawned a cottage industry of "virtual loot farmers": People who play the games just to obtain fantasy goods that they can sell in the real world. The best loot farmers can make between six figures a year and six figures a month.Play Money is an extended walk on the weird side: a vivid snapshot of a subculture whose denizens were once the stuff of mere sociological spectacle but now -- with computer gaming poised to eclipse all other entertainments in dollar volume, and with the lines between play and work, virtual and real increasingly blurred -- look more and more like the future.
Edward Castronova, the premier expert in the field, offers a fascinating look at unregulated virtual currencies from ThankYou Points to Bitcoin, exploring their legal and political ramifications and how they will change the global economy forever.
New technologies are driving transformational changes in the global financial system. Virtual currencies (VCs) and the underlying distributed ledger systems are among these. VCs offer many potential benefits, but also considerable risks. VCs could raise efficiency and in the long run strengthen financial inclusion. At the same time, VCs could be potential vehicles for money laundering, terrorist financing, tax evasion and fraud. While risks to the conduct of monetary policy seem less likely to arise at this stage given the very small scale of VCs, risks to financial stability may eventually emerge as the new technologies become more widely used. National authorities have begun to address these challenges and will need to calibrate regulation in a manner that appropriately addresses the risks without stifling innovation. As experience is gained, international standards and best practices could be considered to provide guidance on the most appropriate regulatory responses in different fields, thereby promoting harmonization and cooperation across jurisdictions.
This book describes how the rapid advancement in encryption and network computing gave birth to new tools and products that have influenced the local and global economy alike. One recent and notable example is the emergence of virtual currencies (such as Bitcoin) also known as cryptocurrencies. Virtual currencies introduced a fundamental transformation that affected the way goods, services and assets are exchanged. As a result of its distributed ledgers based on blockchain, cryptocurrencies not only offer some unique advantages to the economy, investors, and consumers, but also pose considerable risks to users and challenges for regulators when fitting the new technology into the old legal framework. The core of this proposed book is to present and discuss the evidence on financial asset capabilities of virtual currencies. The contributors of this volume analyze several interesting and timely issues such as the particularities of virtual currencies and their statistical characteristics; the diversification benefits of virtual currencies; the behavior and dependence structure between virtual currencies and the financial markets; the economic implications of virtual currencies, their effects, their price risk, and contagion spillovers in a unified and comprehensive framework; the future of virtual currencies and their distributed ledgers technology.
Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Communications - Journalism, Journalism Professions, grade: 1,0, Vrije University Brussel, language: English, abstract: This master thesis approaches the field of virtual currencies in online gaming. It pursues the overall question if it is possible, to establish a universal, virtual currency in the online gaming environment. It aims on showing how virtual currencies in their particular fields work, what the different mechanisms imply and who the stakeholders are. In order to give a comprehensive insight on the topic, framework issues such as clarification of terms in the field of virtual currencies in online gaming will be given. Furthermore, processes, consequences and legal aspects are provided. The core of the thesis contains the analysis of four case studies, covering a representative range of virtual currencies in four different areas of online gaming. The analysis contains a massive multiplayer online role playing game, a gaming application for smart phones, a social network with a gaming section and a virtual marketplace featuring browser games. With the help of a business modeling matrix and a platform typology the cases are analysed on parameters such as e.g. functional and financial architecture. The results, put together in a comparative overview, help to point out particular potentials, chances and risks of virtual currencies in online gaming.
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A cutting-edge look at how accelerating financial change, from the end of cash to the rise of cryptocurrencies, will transform economies for better and worse. We think weÕve seen financial innovation. We bank from laptops and buy coffee with the wave of a phone. But these are minor miracles compared with the dizzying experiments now underway around the globe, as businesses and governments alike embrace the possibilities of new financial technologies. As Eswar Prasad explains, the world of finance is at the threshold of major disruption that will affect corporations, bankers, states, and indeed all of us. The transformation of money will fundamentally rewrite how ordinary people live. Above all, Prasad foresees the end of physical cash. The driving force wonÕt be phones or credit cards but rather central banks, spurred by the emergence of cryptocurrencies to develop their own, more stable digital currencies. Meanwhile, cryptocurrencies themselves will evolve unpredictably as global corporations like Facebook and Amazon join the game. The changes will be accompanied by snowballing innovations that are reshaping finance and have already begun to revolutionize how we invest, trade, insure, and manage risk. Prasad shows how these and other changes will redefine the very concept of money, unbundling its traditional functions as a unit of account, medium of exchange, and store of value. The promise lies in greater efficiency and flexibility, increased sensitivity to the needs of diverse consumers, and improved market access for the unbanked. The risk is instability, lack of accountability, and erosion of privacy. A lucid, visionary work, The Future of Money shows how to maximize the best and guard against the worst of what is to come.
