Virtual currency Financial Services. The Internet currency Flooz was created in 1999. The term "virtual currency" appears to have been coined around 2009, paralleling the development of digital currencies and social gaming. Although the correct classification is "digital currency", the U.S. government prefers and has uniformly adopted the term "virtual currency". The U.S. Treasury's FinCEN was first, followed by the FBI in 2012, the General Accounting Office in 2013, as well as the government agencies testifying at the November 2013 U.S. Senate hearing on bitcoin, including the Department of Homeland Security, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Office of the Attorney General.
Digital currency currency is a money balance recorded electronically on a stored-value card or other devices. Another form of electronic money is network money, allowing the transfer of value on computer networks, particularly the Internet. Electronic money is also a claim on a private bank or other financial institution such as bank deposits. Digital money can either be centralized, where there is a central point of control over the money supply, or decentralized, where the control over the money supply can come from various sources. In 1983, a research paper by David Chaum introduced the idea of digital cash. In 1990, he