Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Virtual Money

I am not sure if I wrote about bitcoins recently. It is a type of virtual money.
There is a new player in the world of virtual currency, your friends at Facebook. They are creating a new online currency.

Gosh it must be great to create your own currency, so many doing it already. One state has voted to be able to make their own currency. Now this is legal and has been done many times in the United States. Here is a small quote from a Wikipedia article on Banknotes, "In the United States, public acceptance of banknotes in replacement of precious metals was hastened in part by Executive Order 6102 in 1933. This order carried the threat of a maximum $10,000 fine and a maximum of ten years in prison for anyone who kept more than $100 of gold in preference to banknotes."

So possible situations. One, will the government limit how much gold you can own again, there was a part of one of the recent bills that said that all sales of gold over a certain dollar amount had to be reported to the Federal Government. Two, can states issue their own currencies if they use gold and silver? Three, there is no law prohibiting online organizations to create their own currencies, if they do and that currency is used then how could you tax it?