Seeding and discounting credits in a virtual currency system

Abstract

A virtual currency system keeps track of virtual credits, which can be owned, transferred, purchased, and sold by participants in a virtual economy. Each virtual credit has an internal value and an external value, which define, respectively, the exchange rates for creating and redeeming the virtual credits. Upon creation of new virtual credits, the internal value for those credits is the rate for which real currency was paid per credit. The external value sets the rate at which the virtual credits can be redeemed for real currency. Each virtual credit may further have a face value, which is an apparent value of the virtual credit within the virtual economy, giving users a baseline impression for valuing the virtual currency. These features of the virtual currency enable a number of useful actions within the virtual economy, including currency seeding, couponing, and chargebacks.

What is claimed is: 
     
         1 . A computer-implemented method comprising:
 storing an account for each of a plurality of participants of a virtual economy;   receiving a request to create new credits of a virtual currency;   recording a number of created credits and a set of attributes of the created credits in a data store, the created credits associated with their attributes, the attributes including an amount of real currency used to fund each credit;   assigning the created credits to one or more accounts of one or more of the participants in exchange for receiving an amount of real money from the one or more participants;   receiving a request to redeem one or more of the credits in connection with an account of a redeeming participant of the plurality of participants; and   providing an amount of real currency to the redeeming participant, the amount of real currency provided to the redeeming participant greater than the amount of real currency used to fund the redeemed one or more credits.   
     
     
         2 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 identifying the account of the redeeming participant as having included one or more credits for which the amount of real currency provided to the redeeming participant was greater than the amount of real currency used to fund the one or more credits.   
     
     
         3 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 receiving a request to transfer credits from an account of a transferring participant to an account of a receiving participant;   deducting an amount of credits identified by the request to transfer from the account of the transferring participant;   adding the amount of credits to the receiving participant; and   associating the credits from the account of the transferring participant with the account of the receiving participant   
     
     
         4 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 3 , wherein deducting the amount of credits identified by the request to transfer from the transferring participant comprises deducting the credits in the account of the transferring participant having a lower internal value compared with other credits in the account. 
     
     
         5 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 3 , wherein deducting the amount of credits identified by the request to transfer from the transferring participant comprises deducting the credits in the account of the transferring participant having a lower external value compared with other credits in the account. 
     
     
         6 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 3 , wherein deducting the amount of credits identified by the request to transfer from the transferring participant comprises deducting the credits in the account of the transferring participant in an order in which the credits were added to the account. 
     
     
         7 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 receiving a request to transfer credits from an account of a transferring participant to an account of a receiving participant, the request received in connection with a purchase of a good or a service by the transferring participant;   deducting an amount of credits identified by the request to transfer from the account of the transferring participant;   adding the amount of credits to the receiving participant; and   associating the credits from the account of the transferring participant with the account of the receiving participant;   receiving a request to redeem one or more of the credits from the set of credits from the receiving participant; and   providing an amount of real currency to the receiving participant greater than the amount of real currency used to fund the redeemed one or more credits.   
     
     
         8 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 7 , further comprising:
 identifying the account of the receiving participant as having included one or more credits for which the amount of real currency provided to the redeeming participant was greater than the amount of real currency used to fund the one or more credits.   
     
     
         9 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , wherein the amount of real currency used to fund one or more of the credits is zero. 
     
     
         10 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 receiving a request to transfer credits from an account of a transferring participant to an account of a receiving participant;   receiving a request from a receiving participant to return the transferred credits back to the account of the transferring participant, the transferred credits associated with one of the requests to transfer credits;   identifying the transferred credits;   deducting the transferred credits from the account of the receiving participant; and   adding the transferred credits back to the account of the transferring participant.   
     
     
         11 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , wherein the participants comprise at least one of: a central manager, one or more individual users, one or more vendors, one or more third party payors, or any combination thereof. 
     
     
         12 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 1 , further comprising:
 attributing to the created credits in the set of credits a unique identification number associated with a specific vendor;   assigning the created credits to an account of an individual user;   displaying to the individual user a total number of credits in the account of the individual user;   displaying to the individual user the number of created credits that have a unique identification number associated with the specific vendor; and   allowing a transfer of the created credits only to the specific vendor in exchange for a good or a service, the created credits having a redemption value to the specific vendor that is less than the value of the good or the service and greater than an amount of real currency used to fund the credits that have the unique identification number associated with the specific vendor.   
     
     
         13 . A computer-implemented method comprising:
 storing an account for each of a plurality of participants of a virtual economy;   receiving a request to create one or more new credits of a virtual currency;   recording, by a processor, a creation of a plurality of credits of the virtual currency and a set of attributes of the credits;   identifying a set of the created credits, each credit in the set having a specified attribute;   assigning the created credits to one or more accounts of participants;   receiving a request to redeem one or more of the credits having the specified attribute in connection with an account of a redeeming participant; and   providing an amount of real currency to the redeeming participant, the amount of real currency provided for each redeemed credit having the specified attribute exceeding an amount of real currency used to fund a credit having the specified attribute.   
     
     
         14 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 13 , further comprising:
 receiving a request to transfer credits from an account of a transferring participant to an account of a receiving participant, the request received in connection with a purchase of a good or a service by the transferring participant;   deducting an amount of credits identified by the request to transfer from the account of the transferring participant;   adding the amount of credits to the receiving participant; and   associating the credits from the account of the transferring participant with the account of the receiving participant;   receiving a request to redeem one or more of the credits from the set of credits from the receiving participant;   providing an amount of real currency to the receiving participant for each redeemed credit from the set of credits exceeding an amount of real currency used to fund a credit from the set of credits.   
     
     
         15 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 13 , wherein the participants comprise at least one of: a central manager, one or more individual users, one or more vendors, one or more third party payors, or any combination thereof. 
     
     
         16 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 13 , wherein the amount of real currency used to fund a credit having the specified attribute is zero. 
     
     
         17 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 13 , further comprising:
 attributing a unique identification number associated with a specific vendor to one or more of the created credits;   assigning the created credits, including one or more credits from the set of credits, to an account of an individual user;   displaying to the individual user a total number of credits in the account of the individual user and a total number of credits in the account of the individual users from the set of credits;   displaying to the individual user the number of credits in the account of the individual user that have a unique identification number associated with the specific vendor; and   allowing a transfer of the created credits associated with the specific vendor only to the specific vendor in exchange for a good or a service, the created credits having a redemption value less than the value of the good or the service.   
     
     
         18 . A computer-implemented method comprising:
 storing an account for each of a plurality of participants of a virtual economy;   receiving a request to create new credits of the virtual currency;   creating a number of credits and a set of attributes of the credits, the attributes including an amount of real currency used to fund each credit;   recording the number of created credits and the set of attributes of the created credits in a data store, the created credits associated with their attributes;   assigning one or more of the created credits to one or more accounts of participants that performed one or more specified activities;   receiving a request to redeem one or more of the credits having a specified attribute in connection with an account of a redeeming participant; and   providing an amount of real currency to the redeeming participant, the amount of real currency provided to the redeeming participant for one or more redeemed credits having the specified attribute greater than the amount of real currency used to fund the redeemed one or more credits having the specified attribute.   
     
     
         19 . The computer-implemented method of  claim 18 , wherein the one or more specified activities are associated with a vendor, and an amount of real currency is received from the vendor in exchange for assigning one or more of the created credits to the one or more accounts of participants that performed the one or more specified activities, the amount of real currency received based at least in part on the internal value of the created credits assigned to the one or more accounts of participants. 
     
     
         20 . The computer-readable storage medium of  claim 18 , wherein the participants comprise at least one of: a central manager, one or more individual users, one or more vendors, one or more third party payors, or any combination thereof.