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.
Private currency permit the transfer of points or miles. Some startups, such as the Canadian website Points.com, have sought to make loyalty "points" more currency-like by creating an exchange where points from one loyalty program can be traded for points in other such programs. A cryptocurrency is a form of digital or virtual currency where cryptography secures the transactions and controls the creation of additional units of the currency. A cryptocurrency wallet can be used to store the public and private keys which can be used to receive or spend the cryptocurrency. The cryptographic systems used allow for decentralisation; a decentralised cryptocurrency