Electronic gold

I just finished re-reading A History of Money, by Glyn Davies. It's a very competent book on evolution of money from cowrie shells to electronic transactions. Since I believe that money is one of the greatest innovations of all time, I'm going through this and other books on history of finance searching for recurring invention patterns that can be re-used in various technology domains. After all, transaction money is just a control signal that the buyer sends to the seller in order to obtain the goods. Capital is another interesting function of money that follows innovation patterns in storage technologies. The days of the gold standard are long gone, but even today all central banks hold tons of this precious metal in their secure vaults. Just in case, people will trust useless metal more than useless paper or useless electronic signals.
It is interesting though that something very similar to the gold standard is being developed in the virtual world today. Here's an excerpt from an article on Facebook Credits:

How do I set up my own currency?
You permit the user to purchase only one thing with Facebook Credits: your currency. Once the users have exchanged Facebook Credits for your currency, they can participate in the broader game economy. There should be no direct purchase of any items or anything other than your currency with Facebook Credits.

Once the exchange is made, you’ve locked up the value of those Credits in your own currency, ensuring it won’t move off to another application.

Replace "Facebook Credits" with "Gold Coins" and you get the good old gold standard. In Facebook we trust! Funny, how history runs in circles.

tags: control, money, business, signal, commerce, games, virtual, market, payload