ABSTRACT

This chapter looks at the rising interest in, incidence of and attempts at regulation of virtual currencies. As more and more commercial activities are instituted, organised and concluded online, both lawful and unlawful, the need for a corresponding method of online regulation becomes imperative. The term virtual currency encompasses a number of divergent mechanisms to transfer and generate value over the internet. The nature of virtual currency has evolved to encompass crypto-currencies such as Bitcoins. The Bitcoin community maintains a wiki which contains details of the currency. Tier 2 of the European Central Bank (ECB) classification refers to virtual currency schemes that are unidirectional in scope. In such systems, the virtual currency can be bought using real-world currencies, but any surplus virtual currency cannot be converted back to real-world currency. The best-known examples for virtual currencies are Linden Dollars. Linden Dollars are the currency created by Linden Labs for use in the virtual world known as Second Life.