“Virtual” and real money

An important consequence of the development of Internet technologies is the virtualization of various aspects of economic relations. One of the aspects of this kind is monetary relations. The use of new Internet technologies has led, among other things, to significant changes in the objects and structure of monetary relations. In particular, there is an increasing number of private organizations (communities) that issue virtual objects, which are called “virtual money”. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the number of theoretical and empirical studies of this phenomenon is increasing. The peculiarity of this economic-theoretical work is that “virtual money” is studied independently of the standard theory of money. The object of the study is a phenomenon called “virtual money”. The subject of the study is the quality of “virtual money” as an object of economic relations. The purpose of the study is to define (identify) “virtual money”. The work contains a theoretical aspect of the grounds for identifying money. Unlike standard monetary theory, money is defined independently of value. The validity of the differentiation of money into cash and non-cash money is analyzed. Using the example of commercial bank operations, a brief justification is given for the impossibility of the existence of non-cash money; commercial banks create debt obligations that are not money. The necessary condition for the issue of money is specified. The creation of “virtual money” money in a way alternative to the state issue does not correspond to the fundamental condition of the issues of (valid) money.