Social currency seeking confidence

The advent of internet currencies such as Facebook credits or Second Life's Linden dollars are exercising the minds of US Treasury and OECD officials keen to understand their impact both on fiscal systems and central banks.

According to Nigel Cameron, president and CEO of Washington DC based independent think tank, the Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies (C-PET) "the whole question of the development of currency once it is off the gold standard is about confidence.

"The technologies now coming along will reopen the questions about central banks and fiscal systems," adding that US Treasury and OECD now had teams examining the issue.

Cameron was a speaker at this week's Amplify festival organised by AMP, and told the audience to expect "all sorts of pseudo currencies," to develop along with "informal, random ad hoc currencies."

He warned that given the speed of technology advances "retail banking has no future in the form we know it."

However the currency newcomers could only expect to carve out a market niche if they could establish trust which was described as the new "social currency."

Although the changes he foresaw were extreme Cameron said that there were opportunities for nimble operators as there was still "huge value to be tapped from the innovation and disruption" being wreaked by technology.