Peer-to-peer or digital currencies like Bitcoin, LiteCoin, and Vic Coin have now been around for years. The process to move away from physical money has been initiated by governments when they realized how much easier and cheaper it is to be digital. Cash provided a certain anonymity in the old days as it was difficult to trace the transactions, but since now almost everything is digital it has brought about a degree of transparency in most transactions.
For a long time the governments utilized the volume of currency in the system and change in interest rates to lower the value of their currency (and thus lessen the value of their total outstanding debt). Digital currencies enable them to do this in an even better manner.
But digital currencies have also ended the monopoly of the governments over the currency system. Now, almost anyone can create a virtual currency. Groups of countries, criminals, and anarchists have even before been able to create and maintain different versions of currency systems for their funding purposes. So long as the value of the alternative currency is recognized by another party, it is possible to move the funds at an international level.
Cryptocurrencies that already exist and function abound in the hundreds. A few of them are more popular than others, but Bitcoin can be taken as benchmark of sorts in this market. Governments are yet to decide on the way to deal with these currencies. A few governments have outrightly banned their use within their system while others are trying to regulate and integrate them into their monetary system, but the consistency in terms of practice or law is lacking on how to deal with them.
Even if governments are finally able to go for a system that employs total use of digital currency, there might always be a worry for the “dark” versions or scam currencies and frauds coming up. There have already been quite few scams in the digital currency realm with fake exchanges coming up as well as “virtual” banks.
The future is getting murkier for the Bitcoin and other new currencies like it such as the Vic Coin, Peercoin, Dogecoin, and Litecoin. Scandals have been rocking the digital currency world ranging from their connection to the drug site like the Silk Road to the arrest of a Bitcoin exchange executive and several other scam reports as well.
Now, the Bitcoin and other digital currency users and even the speculators in the digital currency are taking a step out of the dedicated exchanges and starting to trade and have transactions on the online marketplace sites like the eBay or utilizing the secure third party payment services like PayPal. But even these users have had to bear the burnt of scammers who are able to hack the genuine and bonafide accounts on those sites.
The debate is yet to be settled if digital money like Bitcoin, Vic Coin, Litecoin, is in fact real money or if it is just another medium to exchange which allows two people to agree on value of things to be swapped. But since currencies like the Bitcoin, Vic Coin, Litecoin, seem to function like real money and are now increasingly being used for trading in items such as even real estate, the scope for these currencies to vanish or flatten is actually very real.
