of the European Monetary Institute. After the release of this report there were three notable front runners that emerged: PayPal, Liberty Reserve and E-gold which was incidentally started by Nick Szabo, a former DigiCash employee and e-contract innovator.

Whilst PayPal was careful to negotiate and avoid the challenges faced by integrating into the monetary system in a manner deemed acceptable by central banks and regulators, the other two eventually ran foul of authorities in the US due to the the suspected nature of some clients that may have taken up these services for activities related to money laundering and criminal enterprise. These three early e-money systems primarily operated as centralized systems.

The impact of e-money on physical forms of currency has been discussed by @drehmann2002challenges, while @sifers1996regulating discusses policy concerns and regulatory issues. We will now be focusing on other electronic forms of money, which in contrast to e-money are not digital representations of fiat money, but rather new forms of currency altogether.

Virtual currencies to facilitate online gaming economies
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The 1990s saw the emergence of virtual currencies, typically currencies that were also centralized but restricted, at least in their early forms, to use in online messaging and virtual 