Virtual Currencies... What's your take?

Here is an article on CNN.com that discusses the use of virtual currencies in social networks, and online gaming and some these currencies can be traded against actual currencies. Seems harmless right? Well it depends to the extent they develop. Right now they seem pretty trivial, but let's say that one of these currencies catches on and can be used to purchase goods in the real world. Why wouldn't they replace the actual currencies that are so laden with problems and bogged down with exchange rates?

For example, Instead of having to worry about taxes and writing a check, I can fix someone's car and they pay me in Hi5 dollars. Then I go buy a PS3 or something like that from a website that honors Hi5 dollars.

Basically, conspiracy therorist would say they could see virtual currencies paving the way for a one-world currency not based off of anything concrete. To which one entity could control, and we all know that's not a good thing. Why is that not a good thing? I'll explain below.

The dollar used to be based off of the gold standard, so there would never be more dollars in circulation than the value of the US gold reserves, therefore it was based on something concrete. I'm not a historian, nor will I pretend to be, so I don't have the exact dates and details, but eventually that changed and the Federal Reserve (FED) was established and lends our government money at interest, so pretty much they control the amount of currency that is in circulation. Stringent guidelines are in place as to not prevent them from flooding the market with useless amounts of dollars which would cause inflation basically rendering the dollar useless. If the trend holds, the next forseeable step would be to decouple the dollar from a concrete currency at all and the idea of a virtual currency would allow the powers that be to have autonomous control over the currency using something like the fear of another economic collapse as reason enough establish the system. I forsee one huge problem with virtual currency, if it ever comes to that, which I'll explain with the following example.

Let's say you have $5,000 in a savings account at a bank. The bank tells you that in 6 months you will no longer be able to use your debit card, write a check, make online purchases or make withdrawals, or deposit money into your account. To make matters worse they say that no other banks will accept you. What would you do? You damn right!!! I would take my money out and have $5,000 in cash. OK, let's reuse the same scenario, but this time with a virtual currency... Then what??? You're just out of luck because the virtual currency isn't based on anything concrete at all. Someone could argue that you could trade it against a concrete currency like the Dollar or Euro, but if there aren't any left then you'll be stuck and broke and there would not be a thing that could be done about it.

I think people are being conditioned to accept the eventual use of a virtual currency. Even though this is a comical example, but if you compare the old version of Monopoly against the new version of Monopoly what's the difference? Yup, the new version doesn't use cash, it gives you a card that represents your cash. A virtual currency where whoever is playing the banker has all the control by crediting and debiting money on your card on their banking machine. You can't make any transactions via player to player without the banker being involved.

This blog was way longer than I intended it to be, so I'll cut it short here. Just posted this as food for thought.