Amazon just announced its introducing a virtual currency that can be used for purchases on the Kindle Fire. The Washington Post reports,

Starting in May, consumers will be able to use Amazon Coins to buy applications and virtual merchandise sold within games, the Seattle-based company said today in a statement. The company will give customers “tens of millions of dollars” worth of the currency, which will be accepted in the Amazon Appstore.

A couple months ago I speculated about Wal-Mart issuing Marts “that might initially be used only for purchases in Wal-Mart stores. But over time, it’s not hard to imagine Marts being traded all over town and easily converted to dollars, pesos, Yuan, or other currencies traded where Wal-Mart has stores.”

I should have known Jeff Bezos would get there first.

Douglas French

Douglas E. French is senior editor of the Laissez Faire Club. He received his master's degree under the direction of Murray N. Rothbard at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, after many years in the business of banking. He is the author of three books, Early Speculative Bubbles and Increases in the Supply of Money, the first major empirical study of the relationship between early bubbles and the money supply; Walk Away, a monograph assessing the philosophy and morality of strategic default; and The Failure of Common Knowledge, which takes on many common economic fallacies. He is founder and editor of LibertyWatch magazine. Write him.

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