Patent ID: 8255297

Claim:
A method comprising: storing an account for each of a plurality of participants of a virtual economy; receiving a plurality of requests to create new credits of the virtual currency; for each request to create new credits, recording, by processor, in a data store a number of credits created and a set of attributes of the credits, wherein the attributes include an internal value representing a rate of real currency received per credit created and an external value representing a rate of real currency to be provided per credit upon redemption, assigning the created credits to one or more accounts of participants, and associating the credits with their attributes; receiving a plurality of requests to transfer credits from an account of a transferring participant to an account of a receiving participant; for each request to transfer credits, deducting an amount of credits from the transferring participant, adding the amount of credits to the receiving participant, and associating the credits added to the receiving participant with their attributes; receiving a plurality of requests to redeem a number of credits from the account of a participant; for each request to redeem credits from the account of a participant, deducting, by a processor, the redeemed credits from the account of the participant, and providing an amount of real currency to the participant, the amount of real currency provided determined based on the external value of the redeemed credits.