If you are still using paper money, you are light years behind the geeks who have taken electronic money to a whole new level. Only a real geek can appreciate the value of a form of currency that is little more than a collection of bits in cyberspace. These electronic coins, which go by various names, are in turn stored inside a virtual wallet. This makes electronically generated money beyond being light weight and convenient. It is a very different way of thinking about money, compared to how people used to think about money in the days when everyone had a clothesline and spent their evenings watching black and white television.
Though it may seem odd to you, and perhaps even a little hard to believe, more and more retail merchants online are accepting forms of electronic money–especially one mainstream electronic currency called bit coin. What started out as electronic coins used by online gamers in virtual worlds have actually become a form of real currency in the real world. Geeks like this type of currency, not only because it is easy to use online, but also because currencies like bitcoin, litecoin, and dogecoins, for example, are very difficult to trace. When you pay with these forms of currency, you are essentially anonymous.
The Now Anonymous Online Economy
With the increase in anonymity associated with bit coin and other electronic currency transactions, it makes many people feel more comfortable to spend this type of currency, feeling as if the governments of the world are no longer looking over their shoulder. This has caused many critics of electronic currencies to imagine that this type of transaction based economic advancement will rapidly attract a seedy criminal element, since a single online user of electronic currency can maintain and anonymously harbor numerous electronic wallets. In a sense, as more and more people move over to using electronic currencies, not only does the value of these currencies go up, but governments lose the ability to easily track and tax transactions–especially as electronic currencies are often exchanged for gift cards on the open online market, again with complete anonymity being sustained during such transactions. As more and more efforts are made by governments to pry into off shore accounts, people are turning to electronic currencies as a means to becoming the new modern tax havens. It is a situation where the geeks may have outsmarted the authorities in ways few ever saw coming.
The Future Of Electronic Currencies
As with all aspects of economic growth, the governments of the world will eventually look to tax and regulate even the use of virtual money stored in virtual wallets. While the geeks may have gotten the upper hand for now, it is simply a matter of time before politicians and government leaders take notice of how their own monetary systems are being circumvented by those who switch over to using these types of electronic currencies. One can expect that moves will be made by these political entities, beginning with the convenient characterization of such electronic currencies being some type of criminal threat to the economic stability of the world economy.