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 founded in 1996 and backed by gold. Another known digital currency service was Liberty Reserve, founded in 2006; it lets users convert dollars or euros to Liberty Reserve Dollars or Euros, and exchange them freely with one another at a 1% fee. Both services were centralized, reputed to be used for money laundering, and inevitably shut down by the U.S. government. Q coins or QQ coins, were used as a type of commodity-based digital currency on Tencent QQ's messaging platform and emerged in early 2005. Q coins were so effective in China that they were said to have had a