Do you know of any online monetary systems?
I recently came across bitcoin, it is what I was really looking for at the time. "You say you want a more ""stable"" system. Recall from your introductory economics courses that money has three roles: a medium of exchange (here is $, give me goods), a unit of account (you owe me $; the business made $ last year), and a store of value (I have saved $ for the future!). I assume that you are mostly concerned with the store-of-value role being eroded due to inflation. But first consider that most people still want regular currency, so as a medium of exchange or accounting unit anything would face an uphill battle. If you discard that role for your currency, and only want to store value with it, you could just buy equities and commodities and baskets of currencies and debt in a brokerage account (possibly using mutual funds) to store your value. Trillions of dollars' worth of business takes place this way every year already. Virtual currency was a bit of a dot-com bubble thing. The systems which didn't go completely bust and are still around have been beset by money-laundering, and otherwise remain largely an ignored niche. An online fiat currency has the same basic problem that another currency has. You need to trust the central bank not to create more money and cause inflation (or even just abscond with the funds... or go bankrupt / get sued). Perhaps the Federal Reserve may be jerking us around on that front right now.... they're still a lot more believable than a small private institution. Some banks might possibly be trustworthy enough to launch a currency, but it's hard to see why they'd bother (it can't be a big profit center, because people aren't willing to pay too much to just use money.) And an online currency that's backed by commodities (e.g. gold) is going to be subject to potentially violent swings in the prices of commodities. Imagine getting a loan out for your house, denominated in terms of e-gold, and then the price of gold triples. Ouch?" "Congratulations!  You see the problem.  You can't get away from unstable currencies. The other problem is that the US will shut down anything that appears to be providing a replacement for the US Dollar.  Once a token or medallion or gift certificate or whatever starts being used outside the confines of one business or one network of businesses, it will be shut down, quickly.  It happened with Las Vegas gambling tokens.  Another more recent attempt was with the Liberty Dollar, gold and silver coins and certificates that not only had precious metal backing, but whose proponents encouraged taking them to retailers and paying with them as if they were US Dollars.  There were other problems with this idea, but it was the competitive stature of the Liberty dollar that got the headquarters raided and the main site shut down. Basically, all signs point toward dealing with currencies and their state of being systematically eroded over time.  If you do find one that appears to exist, be wary, because the rules can change at any time, and the ""money"" will be nowhere near as liquid as a proper currency." "Edit: I discovered Bitcoin a few months after I posted this answer. I would strongly recommend anyone interested in this question to review it, particularly the myths page that dispels much of the FUD. Original answer: Although it is not online, as a concept the Totnes Pound may be of interest to you. I live quite close to this village (in the UK) and the system it promotes does work well.  According to the   Transition Town Totnes website this   means that it is ""a community in a   process of imagining and creating a   future that addresses the twin   challenges of diminishing oil and gas   supplies and climate change , and   creates the kind of community that we   would all want to be part of."" If you are looking for a starting place to introduce a new type of currency, perhaps in response to over-dependence on oil and global trade, then reading about the Transition Towns initiative could provide you with the answers you're looking for." I'm the equivalent of the FED at ROBLOX. I run a virtual economy there worth millions of dollars. Even though we are in the business of printing our own money, we've seen much more stability in our currency than in the USD. It actually appreciates over time. I don't think it would make a good investment though, nor would any of the online virtual currencies that I am aware of. I'm not sure, but I think the monetary system of Second Life or World of Warcraft would correspond to what you are looking for. I don't think they are independent of the dollar though, since acquiring liquidity in those games can be done through exchange for real dollars. But there can be more closed systems, maybe Sim type games where this is not the case. I hope this helps. This site lets people deposit gold into an account.  Once you have an account setup you can pay others in gold online.  I haven't used it or know of anyone who has so I cannot provide any feedback to how well it works.
"I would imagine that it is unlikely that you will ever see this money again. Here are some things you can do. Contact your local police.  You have two complaints: the money being taken, and the continued harassing phone calls.  Hopefully they will tell you what can be done and have recommendations for you on what to do next. File a complaint with the New Jersey Department of Consumer Affairs.  I don't know if this will do you any good, or if you even have enough information to fill out the online forms, but if you are having trouble getting assistance from the police, this might be another option. To address the phone calls specifically, you may want to contact your telephone company.  There are things they can do to prevent further harassing phone calls from getting through.  See this article from the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse for more information. Teach your son to be suspicious online.  You can't just send cash to ""this guy"" that you don't know and expect to get a good result.  You may want to limit your son's access to cash if you think he hasn't learned a lesson here yet." There are many downsides. The reality is that the US has a strong hold on literally the entire world by having the US Dollar as the reserve currency. This is more so the case that it's used primarily as the petro dollar by all countries. This is definitely worrisome to many given the debt load of the US and the reality of how fragile the global financial system is. It also givens the US huge power and influence over the world. Bitcoin is apolitical. It's monetary system cannot be controlled by any nation state. It is literally the decentralization of trust. It will naturally over time become the world reserve unit of account given all its properties. Lol to be fair, our monetary system is nutty. Money is created out of thin air because (mainly) 3 institutions trade debt around. I get the basics but also have no clue what some concepts actually mean.  Like the national debt; its growing, does that even matter? Its not like anyone is going to call that debt in and collapse the whole global system. Or the big one; so the government doubles the money supply in 2008 but we didn't have run away inflation... that does not make any sense. Its all imaginary. The only sense there is to make, is that some rich sociopath/s are now richer. &gt;When a store physically closes, does that effect business in that surrounding area?  Absolutely. Many malls are only alive because they have anchor stores that attract customers, which then purchase from less attractive outlets nearby. To compensate, I believe outlets generally subsidize rents of anchors.   &gt;This is kind of a branding issue I guess. And/or do online sales noticeably decline in that area?  I don't have any data for this, but I believe online sales would increase as brand awareness increases. There are also benefits where you can buy online and have it delivered, but return in person.   &gt;I got curious from this because I’ve always noticed that L Brands (operates Victoria’s Secret &amp; Bath and body Works) seems to be in many malls, even failing ones. I’ve since learned that this is actually their business model. But why?  Probably low rents. Commercial real estate is a difficult business. Hot locations are always rented. Bad locations will do anything to keep their tenants.  &gt;Would they have high rates of return if they were online? Increases in damages? (hard to resell shower gel and undies, even if you don’t know if they were used)  I have never seen either of those items be accepted for return...  &gt;Or for specialty retailers is it important to the brand that they have a physical location for brand recognition?  Yes. Also there are customer acquisition benefits to being physically present such as being able to give out samples, and having a good fragrance such as Subway and that body wash place. The best solution I've been able to find for this is MoneyWiz, where both are logged into the same sync account. "I use the (gratis, libre) command-line program ledger for my personal accounts.  It handles funds across accounts gracefully, through a feature called ""Virtual Accounts"".  A transaction can add or subtract money from a virtual account, which need not balance with all the other entries in the transaction.  Then it's just a matter of setting up reports to include or exclude these accounts." "My wife and I have been ridiculously happy with YNAB. It's not ""online,"" but syncs across our phones & computers using Dropbox. It supposedly supports different locales and currencies, but I have never needed to try that out." I know you've already lost interest, but i just wanted to respond to this:  &gt;money is a store of value  No, it is not. Money is a very poor store of value. Money is intended as a means to transfer value from one to another.   &gt;You appear to be afraid of what would happen if people were allowed to voluntarily choose what money to use, without government interference.  I repeatedly encouraged you to use alternative currencies, i don't know where you get this from.